SYMHC Classics: Redpath Murders

welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Hey, we're doing some Canadian history, but it's also Halloween US, so that means this one is a little bit on the darker side. This one is a murder mystery sort of. We know what happened and who was involved, but the details of what led to everything happening the way it did are a little fuzzy, and there are a lot of things that have been it seems like, systematically erased from the historic record, so this one remains a mystery.

Heads up, we do want to let you know. This episode involves a lot of discussion of a domestic violence incident that involves guns. It also involves speculation in the press about the mental health of those involved. But this is about what's often called the Redpath murders. On June thirteenth, nineteen oh one, Ada Maria Redpath, who is fifty nine, and her son Jocelyn Clifford, aged twenty six, were found shot to death in their home, which was known as

the Redpath Mansion. We're going to talk about that in the behind the scenes, but more than one hundred and twenty years later, what exactly happened to lead to those deaths remains unknown. We know how they died, but why is probably something we're never going to understand. So we want to tell their story. But first we're going to start by talking about Ada's life and the lives of two of her children, who are closest to this strange tragedy.

Ada Maria Mills was born in April twenty sixth, eighteen forty two into a well off family. Her father, John Easton Mills, was a well known and successful businessman. He died when Ada was still a small child. He was, I believe, the mayor of Montreal when he died. He'd only held that post for I think less than a year at the time, but that's kind of illustrative of how how well known and how prominent he was. Aida married John James Redpath in Putney, England when she was

twenty five. Because she was from a well off family, Aida and John had a marriage contract that reads kind of like a modern prenup. It stated that she would retain total control of her own wealth and assets. It's often referred to as wording, being as though she had never married, so like literally completely siloed off a way

from her husband's money. She would later insist that her daughter would have the same financial autonomy should she ever choose to marry John James Redpath was himself from a wealthy family. His father, John Redpath's senior, had moved to Canada from Scotland in the early nineteenth century and made a fortune in construction, and he used that fortune to purchase more than two hundred acres of land on Mount Royal,

just northwest of Montreal. He subdivided this land and resold a lot of it, and his other wealthy families purchased the land and built on it. This established a really wealthy neighborhood that came to be known as the Square Mile. Over the next hundred years, the community of the Square Mile neighborhood became more and more intertwined. A lot of

families became linked through various marriages amongst themselves. Uh yeah, and all of those families also kind of made a lot of business deals with each other, so their wealth kind of kept folding in on itself, and they, like said, it became this little enclave. When John and Ada married, John was working in the Redpath Family sugar refinery. He had been a partner in the firm at that point

for several years. But he didn't stay in that industry for a very long time after the marriage though, and he actually left it to join the Victoria Rifles. That's a volunteer military regiment based in Montreal that had formed in eighteen sixty two. And that seems like sort of a good indication that John really did not have to worry about income. Ada and John had five children over the course of eight years, starting in eighteen sixty eight.

They were Amy, Peter, John, Reginald, Harold, and Jocelyn Clifford, who went by Clifford. Ada had been the one to purchase the family home at ten sixty five Sherbrook Street West in the square mile. She did that with her family money in eighteen seventy. We'll talk about a house

a bit more on Friday. Yeah, there's a little bit of confusion about which house was the house that I ran into doing research looking for a picture to put on our social media for this, I started to look at a lot of incredibly similar looking houses from right on that same street. Yeah, this is also a problem where there's more than one house called the Red Path Mansion in this area. So at some point in her life, though,

Ada began having a variety of health problems. This is a little bit tricky because the specific nature of those issues is hard to pin down. She was treated for a lot of different things, both physical and psychological, including trigeminal neuralgia, melancholy, and joint pain. Any readings that the family wrote about her generally describe her in ways that kind of characterize her as just being frail or fragile

by the time she was in her forties. It also seems like she was away from her home and her children a lot for treatments for these various problems. An undated letter that she sent the family from New York while she was being fitted for braces for her joint problems. She wrote, quote, my dear children. The doctors say that it would be much better if I could remain until Monday.

They want me to get quite accustomed to my new brace before I leave, and find out all its faults, so that they can send me home in good order and comfortable, for they do not want me to have to come back here very very soon. You see, there is no one in Montreal who can alter the brace and change it if it should hurt me, And it is better that I should stay here until they have made it fit well. It has hurt me dreadfully, but every day they make some little change, and tonight it

is more comfortable, although not quite right yet. And I cannot walk it all yet without my crutches. It stretches my legs so much that it makes it an inch longer than the well leg. And doctors say that I must let them put a thick three quarter inch sole on the boot of my well foot. If they do this, poor Harold will think me more of a giant than ever.

But never mind. If only they will let me go home, I will be willing to wear anything they please, And bless you, my darlings, will be so glad to see your mother that you won't stop to find fault with her looks. God, bless you, my precious children, your loving mother. After AIDA's husband, John James Redpath died on June fourth, eighteen eighty four, Ada relied increasingly on her children, particularly her only daughter, who was also her oldest child. That

was Amy and her youngest son, Clifford. Amy was born on May sixteenth, eighteen sixty eight, the year after Ada and John were married. The red Paths lived abroad during their early marriage, so Amy was born in Europe and then arrived in Canada when she was still a small child. From an early age, Amy was deeply devoted to her family, although we don't really know if this was just her natural tendency or if it was because she knew the ex expectation was that she would need to help with

running the house and caring for her younger siblings. Was really routinely expected of unmarried daughters at the time that they would fill a role of that nature within their family, and Amy had never expressed any obvious interest in marriage or even mentioned any suitors in her writing. Growing up. This of course led to various speculations. Yeah, we'll talk

about some of those on Friday as well. Jocelyn Clifford Redpath was born on November seventeenth, eighteen seventy six, and although his sister, Amy was only eight, she was one of his sponsor slash godparents at his baptism. Clifford, who also went by cliff, studied at McGill University and he

joined the law program there in eighteen ninety seven. Once he started studying law, he also started apprenticing at the law firm of Campbell, Meredith, Alan and Haig, and he was on track for a law career when he graduated in nineteen hundred and started to study for the bar exam. By the end of the eighteen hundreds, only Amy and Clifford were still at home with Ada, and they took care of her. Amy ran the house and Clifford managed the finances with advice from his older brothers and uncles.

To be clear, while they were their mother's primary companions, they weren't managing her care alone. There was also a full house staff who Amy hired and managed, including a nurse, but they were put in the position of being the heads of the household. Ada would travel to upstate New York in the summers to spend time in specialty clinics

or health resorts, and Clifford usually traveled with her. On one occasion in eighteen ninety eight, when Ada was traveling with her older son Peter instead of Clifford, she was so clingy with Amy at the train station she was set to leave that Amy decided she had to go with their mother as well, even though she did not have any luggage or travel gear with her her. Yeah, she wrote in a letter to I believe it was a cousin about like, I'm going to Saratoga Springs and

I don't even have gloves. She just was like, I have nothing. Amy and Clifford were also very close, and they spent a lot of time together even when it was not necessitated by their household duties or responsibilities. So they would attend social gatherings and church together. They often took long walks together, and Amy helped cliff with his law study. She would even rewrite the notes that he had taken during lectures so that they would be easier

for him to study when he was studying for the bar. Basically, like she was writing study guides for him. Clifford was also very very close with their mother. In a letter to Clifford in eighteen ninety eight, Ada's attachment to her youngest son is a parent. She wrote, quote, dearest, Oh, how I miss you. I have come so to depend on you that I am lost without you. Nothing seems

worthwhile without you, your most loving old mother. Though she was still only in her late fifties by nineteen oh one when the shooting took place, Ada's health had declined to the point that she spent her time almost exclusively in her bedroom, and she had stopped attending even family events. Cliff on the other hand, seemed to have a life

that was just on the precipice of real success. In early June of nineteen oh one, there were discussions at the law firm where he'd apprenticed about making him a partner once he passed the bar. That never happened. We are going to talk about how the tragedy in the Red Path Home unfolded, but first we will pause for

a sponsor break. So we mentioned at the top of the episode that Ada and Clifford were quote found dead, and that is often how it's reported, But to me, that wording tends to convey this sense of distance, like the house had been empty except for them, or that they had been dead for some period of time before being found, or that there could be questions about if someone else had been in the house. None of that

was the case. It was absolutely not. They had been discovered immediately because there were plenty of other people in the house when the shots were fired. Those people heard the shots and they went to investigate right away. That sort of hazy and confusing sense of them being discovered

later started immediately in the press. The Calgary Harold ran a brief notice about the deaths that read, in part quote, Missus John Jay Redpath of Sherbrooke Street, a widow lady and her son twenty five were found dying in their house and Missus Redpath's room late in the night from bullet wounds in the heads. The son is in the hospital unable to make a statement. The mother died within an hour without making a statement. All of this actually happened around six pm, So the late in the night

statement it's not really correct. No, there's a lot of incorruption, as we'll discuss. As we said, there were other people home. The oldest of the Red path sons, Peter, was there. He heard the gunfire and he ran right to the sound, which was, as we've said, in his mother's room. There were also members of the house staff in the home who also went to the room. Ada did die on the scene. Some reports say she died instantly, others make it sound like she may have died a few minutes

after being found. Clifford was still alive, although unconscious, and he was reportedly taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital. He died that night at eleven or eleven fifteen, or maybe eleven fifty, maybe shortly after midnight, depending on what account you read. Incidentally, he was never registered in hospital records as having been admitted to the Royal Victoria or to

any other hospital. This is one of just a lot of small inconsistencies and gaps and the information about the shooting that have kept people scratching their heads for more than a century. As soon as this tragedy hit the news, there were rumors about what had really happened in the Red Path home, and there were a lot of factors that fueled the spread of those rumors. For one, the

red Paths were very, very wealthy. They were from a largely insular community of similarly wealthy families, so people naturally had a tendency to want to speculate. But for another the sheer shock of a tragedy like this just led people to speculate about it. But there were really three very significant contributing factors. One, there was little investigation into the shootings. Two, the family was largely unwilling to discuss

the matter publicly. Now, on the one hand, this is totally understandable, who would want to talk about the sudden murder suicide of two family members while grieving and likely in shock. But because no one from the house was saying very much, their quiet started to be framed possibly covering something up. In Three, the details kept changing from report to report. One idea was that Ada had a mental break that was brought on by ongoing insomnia and

that somehow led to the shooting. This is the narrative that came up in news reports immediately after the tragedy. The Sherbrooke Daily Record of Montreal printed the following on June fourteenth, quote, A very sad affair occurred last evening. For some months Missus JJ Redpath had been a confirmed invalid, one of the characteristics of her malady being prolonged insomnia. About six o'clock, the household heard an explosion, and, hurrying to her room, found both Missus Redpath and her son,

mister Clifford Redpath, seriously wounded by revolver shot. Missus Redpath died in a short time. Her son was removed in an unconscious condition to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he expired about midnight. Neither could give any account of what had happened. A write up in the Weekly News Advertiser of Vancouver, British Columbia offered similar speculation, offering quote no details of the tragedy are known. Missus Redpath had been

ill for some time, suffering from insomnia. The surmise is that while temporarily mentally deranged, Missus Redpath attempted to end her life, and in attempting to prevent her, her son was shot. The unfortunate lady then completed her undertaking. But the Ottawa Citizen had a different take. Yes, Ada was having issues with mental health because of insomnia, but she wasn't dangerous because of it. Their ride up states quote who was responsible for the tragedy is yet a mystery.

For some years. Missus Redpath has suffered greatly from insomnia, to such an extent that her mind was affected. Doctor Roddick had been in constant attendance upon her, but it was not imagined that her condition was at all likely to result in violence to herself or the members of her family. Another account from the Quebec Daily Mercury seems to state as fact the idea that Clifford murdered his

mother and then himself in a drunken rage. Quote it has transpired in connection with the Redpath tragedy that Clifford Redpaths shot his mother and then put two bullets in his own head. They had been quarreling for some time, and young Redpath is said to have been under the influence of liquor at the time of the tragedy. The

young man was a law student. The actual findings of the coroner's inquest were different from all of these theories, and it happened very quickly, as in the day after the shooting is when the inquest was held, and the coroner's jury was made up of members of wealthy families from the small square mile community. There were John Dunns, Junior, H. Browning, Lansing, Lewis ECB. Fanshawe, George Hyde, Bartlett, McLennan, Francis mc lennon, John Walker, W. Maurice, John Savage, W. W. Watson, Charles

Esdley and Herbert Wallace. The Halifax Morning Harold reported quote investigation by the coroner's jury today put a new light on the Redpath tragedy of yesterday. The evidence showed that Missus Redpath had been shot twice, once in the back of the head and then a second time in the right shoulder while the bullet had entered Young Redpass head to the right of the left temple. The jury brought in a verdict that the young man had killed his mother in a fit of temporary insanity brought on by

an epileptic fit, and then taken his own life. The first story given out by the family that the shooting had probably been done by the mother was due to the fact that the young man was still alive. I feel like we should just note that a lot of the language being used to discuss things like epilepsy and mental illness completely outdated, very outdated and offensive by today's day,

so like, just don't go repeating it in casual conversation. Uh. This also brings into focus one detail that changed repeatedly about all this. Although initial accounts for multiple sources stated that there were two shots, there was one account in a paper that Clifford had shot himself twice, and then this account which said that he had shot his mother twice. That would be three shots total. So that's just another

aspect of all this that was inconsistent. Now, subsequent testimonies and we're going to get to those in a moment, do support that three shots number. It seems like some papers may have run on the assumption that it was just two in their haste to get the news to print. As we said, we're reading these news reports that are happening like day of But that is also the kind of detail that you might think would surely show up in a police report. Of course it would, Hey, there

isn't one because there was no police investigation. A coroner's jury was assembled there at the home, but there was never a police presence. They were never called. Now how the coroner ended up there but the police didn't is a little unclear, Although it is most likely that someone from the house staff or the family called the coroner

Ed McMahon through some sort of personal connection. The Weekly News Advertiser of Montreal even noted in an article about the shooting quote, the family refuse any information and the police only heard of the matter by accident. The family have issued a statement, but from it nothing can be learned of the details of the tragedy beyond the fact

that two people are dead. We'll get into the details of those witness testimonies to try to unravel this thing a bit after we first pause to hear from the sponsors that keep the show going. There were several witness statements that were given and heard by the coroner's jury.

Those statements were given by Peter Redpath eight, his son and Clifford's older brother, Thomas George Roddick, the family doctor Hugh Patton, and Rollo Campbell, both of whom were doctors, Rose Shallow, who worked for the Red Path Sometimes her name is written as Rosa, but it appears to have actually been Rose, and Charles James Fleet, who also worked in the home. According to the coroner's jury report, Peter testified to the details that we've already mentioned. According to

peter Redpath. Here's what happened. Quote yesterday evening, I saw my brother, the deceased, arriving home at around six o'clock. He seemed ill and was tired, working hard to prepare for his bar exams. He went up to the room of my mother, Ada Maria Mills, aged sixty two, and a few seconds later I heard a shot from a firearm, followed by two others. I ran up and broke down

the door. I saw my mother lying on the floor, and several feet from her, my brother also lying in a pool of blood, a revolver a foot away from him near his hand. My brother had been very nervous for some time. Incidentally, he got his mother's adron. She was fifty nine. So doctor Roddick also testified that he was called to confirm the death. Rodick's testimony really is the one that sets up the idea that, based on the position of the bodies, he believed that Cliff shot

his mother and then himself. Roddick is also the one that introduced the information that Cliff was epileptic, and this really establishes the way things shook out in the jury investigation. But there is a little snag here. Rodick had been in Montreal on the day of the shooting, which is, you know, not where square Mile is. It's a little outside the city, and by some accounts, he didn't actually get to the Square Mile neighborhood until the following day.

When doctor Patten gave his statement. He said that Ada had been shot in the back of the head and that Clifford was shot through the left temple. Doctor Campbell backed up Patton's account and added that he thought he saw foam in Clifford's mouth, suggesting that as evidence that some kind of epileptic seizure was the cause of Clifford's behavior.

Rose Shallow stated that she had hurched the shots and followed Peter Redpath up the stairs to Ada's room, and that she had seen the two bodies on the floor a few feet apart, as well as two revolvers near Clifford. Charles James Fleet stated that doctor Campbell had given him the two revolvers from the scene to secure, which he produced for the jury to show that one had been discharged twice and the other had been discharged once in

the matter of the death of Ada Redpath. The jury's statement read quote we the undersigned jurors, having heard the evidence, declare that Aida Maria Mills died at Montreal on the thirteenth day of June nineteen hundred and one from a gunshot wound apparently inflicted by Clifford Joscelyt Path, while unconscious of what he was doing and temporarily insane owing to an epileptic attack from which he was suffering at the time.

There is actually a very long quote from Ada redpast son Harold, which was released in a lot of papers along with the news of the coroner's jury's findings. In it, Harold stated that, quote, I left Clifford about two o'clock yesterday in good spirits, though somewhat unwell. In fact, Clifford had been indisposed for some time owing to hard work preparing for his day examinations. No one knows just how the affair occurred. Clifford was particularly fond of his mother.

The statement from Harold Redpath goes on to say that the older brother believed that the only explanation that made any sense was that Clifford had some sort of quote, moment of temporary aberration and that led to the shooting. The brothers had, according to Harold been planning a trip to Quebec so that Clifford could get in some quiet time and continue his studying. As we said, this statement

is long. It's paragraphs long, and even though it's framed in the write up as though it was part of a conversation that Harold had with a reporter, it really reads like a press release. Harold may have been exactly as well spoken as the lengthy quote makes him seem, but his answer may also have been edited by the paper to take out things like repetition or to improve clarity. This also makes it seem kind of like this was the family's one public statement that they were going to

make on the matter. Yeah, if you've ever read somebody's interview and read a press statement, they're not the same in tone, and this one definitely, like I said, it reads like a press statement. There are some pieces of information that are held up as evidence that Clifford Redpath was not in any way suicidal. One of these is a check which he wrote to the Bar of Montreal just two days before the shooting to pay for his

examination fee. As we mentioned earlier, he was also in discussion with his bosses at the law firm where he was apprenticing about becoming a partner just days before this all happened. People that hold this theory that Clifford was not suicidal point out that conversely, his sister Amy's descriptions of their mother Ada in the months leading up to the deaths describe her as being in a very depressed

state where she considered life quote a burden. The funeral for Ada and Clifford was held at Saint John the Evangelist Church the day after the coroner's jury came to their conclusion regarding the shooting, was less than forty eight hours after it happened. This was unusual because they were both given a high Anglican funeral, even though suicide and homicide would have both been disqualifiers for such a service

for Clifford. A paper written by researchers from McGill University about the family and the deaths for the Material Culture Review makes the case that Amy Redpath was influential enough in the Square Mile community she was able to get Clifford the formal funeral, despite it really being contrary to

church policy. Both Ada and Clifford were interred at Mount Royal Cemetery, Yeah It's also pointed out often that in municipal records there are no suicides listed as having occurred that year, So whether or not Amy was influential enough to have made sure those were not on the record, we don't know. But Amy really controlled the flow of information or black thereof about the shooting and prevented anything

else from spreading to the public. She seems to have destroyed any discussion of the matter that may have passed among family members in letters, and wrote to her sister in law on August twenty fourth, so just a little over two months after this tragedy quote I spent yesterday sorting and tearing up old letters, rather a mournful business

of things. That really stands out as odd in the weeks and years following the murder suicide was the way in which Cliff was discussed within the red Path family. In the few surviving letters, Every note about this tragedy speaks of what an amazing young man he was, and how adored he was, What a loss it is that he's gone. But the same really cannot be said for Ada.

They don't say much of her. We don't know, of course, if this is a case where Clifford's youth played a role in shaping the way that people in the family grieved for him, or if there were any kind of missives that expressed anger about his actions or spoke more mournfully about the family matriarch that we just don't have. AIDA's a state valued at one hundred and seventy nine thousand and eighty six dollars and six cents, was distributed

among her heirs. Amy chose to stay in the house where her brother and her mother died, although the rest of the family mostly left the Montreal area in the decade that followed the tragedy. She also married doctor Thomas Roddick, who had been the attending physician in Missus Redpath and

a key witness in the Corner's inquest. Three years after the shooting, one of the Redpath cousins, Lily Dougal, wrote a novel titled The Summit House Mystery, which borrowed details from this murder suicide at the Redpath home in nineteen oh one. Yeah, it also kind of combined some details that seem like they came from the Lizzie Bordon story, so like it's not something you can point to you and go haha, this is there clues it was definitely

fictionalized stuff. McGill University still has the Redpath Library and the Red Path Museum. Their family donated a lot of money to the university over the years. The library's function has changed. It's now used as a hall for large events like school ceremonies. But the Red Path Museum, which was designed by architects Hutchinson and Steel in eighteen eighty two and has been called the first purpose built museum

in Canada, is still a natural sciences museum. The Redpath Mansion is not a place you can visit, though it no longer exists. The home was demolished in nineteen fifty six. Amy had died two years prior, and the property was purchased by a development company. We will, of course, never know what exactly happened in Ada's bedroom on June thirteenth,

nineteen oh one. We know that both of those people died by gunshot, but because of how the whole incident was handled, it can be difficult to trust even the official record on the matter of who shot who, and we have no idea what may have transpired between Ada and Cliff to catalyze their tragic deaths. If there was any insight into that, it seems that Amy Redpath probably destroyed it. One thing we haven't talked about regarding the Redpath family and Amy in particular, is that she was

a writer. She wrote a number of closet dramas. Those are plays that were written to be performed either privately or not at all, and she also wrote poetry. She wrote two poems about her brother cliff after he died. We don't know of any that she wrote for her mother. One of her poems to Clifford, which is titled perfect in Thy Promise, clearly shows her working through her grief in an effort to find peace in the loss of her brother. So that seemed like a good place to

end this one. Perfect in Thy Promise as the bud unfolding, perfect in thyself as rose, fresh blown, ever gracious, all that's pure and good, upholding perfect spirit. Hast thou really flown?

Must I dwell alone? The many dismal morrows, far from blissful hope together spanned hope of service through assuaging dearth and sorrows, hope of golden deeds together planned no the heavy morning weeds I tear as under, struggle from the clouds that blacken round, close my ears to their unholy Woesome thunder rise anew to life from grief, unbound, perfect spirit.

Now I know that thou art near me in thy prescient I rest content, trusting in my love to guard and help and steer me till I too have reached life's high ascent. Not the most halloween ee of Halloween episodes, but you know, a mystery murderer seemed like the right fit for today. Thanks so much for joining us on

this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.