Murder Monday #13 Janet Smith

 

  Janet Smith was born on June 25, 1902, in Perth, Scotland. In January 1923, she started taking care of Fredrick and Doreen Baker's newborn daughter. As the family moved to Paris and then Vancouver, she followed and once in Canada, they hired a Chinese houseboy named Wong Foon Sing, who moved to Canada in 1913. He became infatuated with Smith and would give her gifts, and Smith's friends would testify that she feared him, while her diary revealed otherwise. On July 26, 1924, Wong claimed that he heard a car backfire and he found Smith's body in the basement with a bullet wound in her temple and a.45 caliber revolver near her right hand.

  Constable James Green was called to the scene and contaminated it by grabbing the potential murder weapon. Even though there was no bullet, no blood or brain tissue on the walls, or no powder burns on her face, her death was considered a suicide. Later, a coroner called the death a "self-inflicted but accidental death" and undertakers took the body away to embalm it, making it impossible to collect any more evidence from the body, like to see whether she was sexually assaulted.

   Eventually, the case was reopened and her body was exhumed and they finally claimed the death as a murder. Wong was the main suspect since he was the only person in the house at the time of the murder, plus there was a fairly high level against Asians at the time. In November 1921, a bill was introduced called the Janet Smith bill that would prohibit employing "Orientals" and white women in the same household, but it never passed. 

  

  In March 20,1925, Wong was kidnapped by men dressed in KKK robes and tortured him for six weeks, trying to get him to "confess." He was released in May since he was refusing to cooperate. A scandal developed since the kidnappers included: "two Point Grey police commissioners, the chief of police, a detective sergeant and three prominent officials of the city's Scottish societies." Even the Attorney General, Malcolm Manson, had known about the abduction and where he was being held but did nothing about it. One man pleaded guilty, a detective and his son were convicted, the Point Grey policemen were acquitted, and the government barred prosecution of the other.

  Wong was still put on trial for the murder, but the case was thrown out in October for lack of evidence and he continued to work for the Bakers until 1926 when he returned to Hong Kong. There are other theories for Smith's murder. One is that Smith was raped and murdered at a wild party at the Baker house and the Bakers bribed the authorities to cover it up. Another was that Frederick Baker was the killer.