Will the Real William Townsend Please Stand Up?

Montreal Gazette, October 13, 1857, via Newspapers.com

William Townsend was, on the whole, a very ordinary sort of villain. His numerous grim deeds were brutishly uncomplicated, wholly lacking any of the originality, enterprise, or even flashes of humor that go to make some crimes permanently capture the public imagination. Townsend, in his private life, had a talent for mimicry that in other circumstances might have led him to become a successful actor, but other than that there was little to be said for the man. The one thing that has caused him to be remembered by crime historians--and that renders him worthy of mention in the hallowed grounds of Strange Company HQ--is that he managed to cap off his undistinguished career of evil with an impenetrable mystery that, in his day, managed to captivate all of Canada.

Our story opens at the home of one John Hamilton Nelles, a shopkeeper in a small village named Nelles Corners, near Lake Erie. Living with Nelles was his wife and their small child, plus his mother and younger brother Augustus. A temporary houseguest was Mrs. Nelles' sister Lucy Humphreys.

On the night of October 18, 1854, everyone in the Nelles household was peacefully asleep, except for the head of the house, who was performing some unspecified household tasks. The stillness was suddenly interrupted by a loud knock on the front door, immediately followed by three men bursting into the house. Ominously, their faces were heavily disguised.

The intruders demanded money.  Nelles refused, and ordered the robbers to leave his house.

So one of the men shot Nelles three times.

The sound of gunfire brought Mrs. Nelles and her sister rushing into the room. The bandits ignored the screaming, hysterical women and began ransacking the house, looking for money. They found nothing but Nelles' watch, which they pocketed. They then fled as suddenly and brazenly as they had appeared.

A doctor was summoned, but he could do little to aid the clearly mortally wounded man. Nelles was conscious, but all he could say was that he had no idea who his assailants were. Three hours after being shot, the shopkeeper was dead.

When the local police officers were informed of the tragedy, they instantly went in search of the bandits. A clue as to where the criminals had gone came when two farmers reported that while they were on the road from Nelles Corners to Cayuga, a group of five men (two had evidently waited outside the Nelles cottage) waylaid and robbed them. Then, a constable named Robert Flanders reported that five men had spent the night in his barn, after which they took the early train bound for Buffalo, New York. Flanders recognized one of the men, who appeared to be the leader of the gang, as a known criminal named William Townsend. Flanders believed these were the same men who robbed the two farmers and killed John Nelles.

Flanders and six other policemen took the first available train to Buffalo, where they contacted the local police. A search was made of the city, but their homicidal birds had already flown. By the time the constables arrived in New York, the fugitives had doubled on their tracks and returned to Canada.

A few days after this fruitless search, word came that Townsend had been seen in St. Catherines, where he pawned Nelles' watch. A posse surrounded him, but Townsend managed to shoot his way out, after which he boarded a boat bound for Oswego, an American port on Lake Ontario. Robert Flanders was dispatched to Oswego, which he reached before the vessel arrived in port. When the ship arrived, Flanders was disappointed to learn from the captain that a man matching Townsend's description had indeed boarded the vessel at St. Catherine's, but at Port Dalhousie, the passenger went to another ship bound for Kingston. It was later determined that Townsend subsequently made his way to the home of his brother-in-law, where he went into hiding for some weeks. (Local rumor--which we can only earnestly hope was true--stated that Townsend disguised himself as a woman.)

Some of Townsend's confederates were less fortunate. One of his gang, John Blowes, was captured in a Hamilton brothel run by one "Limping Jenny," and another, George King, was also arrested near Hamilton. Soon afterward, a third fugitive, William Bryson, was apprehended near Toronto.

In April 1855, Blowes, King, and Bryson were brought to trial for the murder of John Nelles. Although no one doubted Townsend had been the one who shot Nelles, Canadian law at the time held that any confederates in a murder were just as guilty as the actual assassin. Accordingly, they were all found guilty. King and Blowes were hanged, but Bryson turned Queen's evidence, which led to his sentence being commuted to life imprisonment.

In the meantime, the chief villain of the piece, William Townsend, evidently tired of a life in hiding, or corsets and petticoats, or both. He soon returned to his usual criminal ways. In December 1855 he robbed a farmer near Port Robinson. The victim managed to track him down to the village inn, and alerted the village constable, Charles Richards. Richards went to the inn to arrest Townsend, but before he could lay hands on his quarry, Townsend pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot the constable dead. As the witnesses to the scene were too afraid to tackle the bandit, he easily made his escape.

A couple of days later, police learned that Townsend was on a train bound for Woodstock, in the western area of the province. The local sheriff was sent a detailed description of the fugitive, with orders that when the train arrived, Townsend should be arrested for murder.

The Woodstock jailer, George Forbes, and four constables were sent to meet the train. Then things began to get a bit strange. On one of the cars, Forbes noticed a man he thought matched the description of the wanted man. As he stared, the passenger casually said, "Oh, I know what you are at. You take me to be Townsend."

"Yes, I do," Forbes replied.

"Oh," the man replied cheerfully. "I do favor the description very much; I have been taken for him once before today, but I am not he. I am going west, and come from the east of Rochester."

Forbes was flummoxed. The man was so well-dressed, and sported such an air of calm confidence, that he did not dare arrest him on the spot. The jailer went to confer with the other constables, who decided that the passenger must be detained until people arrived on the scene who could identify Townsend. They found him on the platform, where he submitted quietly, offering only a mild protest that he was an innocent traveler who only wished to go west. However, as the train began to leave the platform, the man "darted away like a deer," and jumped on the last platform of the last car, leaving his would-be captors behind. Once again, William Townsend--yes, it was he--had eluded justice.

Townsend seemed to have vanished for good. Then in April 1857, a Canadian man named John Iles, who had known Townsend some years back, was washing glasses in his Cleveland, Ohio hotel bar when a railway conductor came in with one of his passengers. The conductor explained that the man was unable to pay his fare, but offered his revolver as collateral. "This young man owes me $3.50," said the conductor. "When he pays you that, and his lodging, let him have his revolver."

When Iles got a good look at the passenger, he instantly realized he was staring at the noted robber and murderer William Townsend. "I was so surprised," Iles later testified, "that I let a glass drop and it smashed." Iles immediately contacted police, and, at long last, the fugitive was arrested. After the extradition process, the prisoner was placed in the county jail at Cayuga.

The trial began on September 27, 1857. The defendant's long and colorful life on the lam brought great attention to the case, making the proceedings a media sensation. The prisoner pleaded "not guilty."

The first prosecution witness was Lucy Humphreys, who identified the defendant as one of the men who had broken into the Nelles home on that fatal night. William Bryson was then put on the stand. He described the formation of the Townsend gang and the many crimes it had committed, and closed with asserting that the man in the dock was indeed his old gang leader. He was followed by ten other witnesses, including John Iles, all of whom swore that the prisoner was indeed the infamous William Townsend. By the time the prosecution rested its case, it appeared to all that Townsend's fate was well and truly sealed.

Then it was time for the defense to present their evidence. And this beautifully open-and-shut legan proceeding began to unravel. The prisoner's lawyers brought in no less than forty-nine witnesses who swore with equal certainty that the man on trial could not possibly be William Townsend. Foremost among them was constable Robert Flanders, who stated that he was willing to bet a thousand dollars that they were putting the wrong man on trial.

The jury, understandably enough. was deeply confused by all this. They were left hopelessly deadlocked, with seven voting for conviction and five for acquittal. The jurors were discharged and the prisoner returned to his cell to await a new trial.

The second trial of Townsend--or, if you believe the defendant, "Not Townsend"--was not for the murder of John Nelles, but that of Charles Richards. The prosecution evidently believed they'd have better luck with the second murder attributed to the prisoner than they did with the first. In the meantime, the accused wrote an open letter to the newspapers, scornfully denying that he was William Townsend. He stated that he was really Robert J. McHenry, a Scotsman who emigrated to America in 1837, where he found work as a mariner on Lake Erie. Furthermore, he claimed that during the period when Nelles and Richards were murdered, he was in California prospecting for gold.

Montreal Gazette, October 10, 1857 via Newspapers.com

His trial was, he stated, a "conspiracy," with the witnesses against him being bribed to commit perjury. "Until I have collected all the perjurers' names who will be willing to slip up and swear to a falsehood, in consideration of money, or to please some interested party in my conviction, will I say but little who I am, for never was there such a gross fraud attempted upon the public. What a compliment this decision will be to the intelligence of Haldimand, when handed down to posterity, when the rising generation will raise the finger of scorn and say, 'there goes a Townsend juror,' and when it becomes a byword and a common saying, 'you are as ignorant as a Townsend Juror,' or, 'you are as intelligent as a Townsend Juror.'"

The prisoner concluded, "When I have exposed to the public the base and diabolical plots that have been organized to convict me of this charge, then will you pause to think on what base purposes the machinery of the law is applied to. If I suffer in your estimation in those imputations that have been cast upon my character, I earnestly desire you to be patient, I am willing to suffer that good may come thereof."

Townsend Trial 2.0 opened in the town of Merrittsville on March 26, 1858. It had many of the same parade of witnesses, although when William Bryson again took the stand, he was forced to admit that he had not initially recognized the prisoner as Townsend. In addition, although Townsend had worn earrings, Bryson had not seen any holes in the defendant's ears. However, Bryson pointed out that Townsend was "a person of a great deal of agility" in impersonations. Jacob Eviner, one of the two farmers who had been robbed by the Townsend gang outside of Nelles Corners, had identified the prisoner as Townsend at the first trial. He now backtracked on his earlier statement, saying that he was "not now prepared to say whether he is or is not the man."

Those who had been present at the murder of Constable Richards offered somewhat qualified identifications of the defendant. One witness said the prisoner "acted the same as Townsend...though the prisoner seemed the larger of the two." Another said, "I don't think I could recognize" Townsend if he saw him again, but "his height was the same as that of the prisoner." Several others testified in much the same terms: they thought the defendant was William Townsend, but they couldn't be certain of it. In contrast, George Forbes expressed no doubts whatsoever that the man in the dock was the same fugitive he had so embarrassingly let slip through his fingers at the train station. John Iles, who claimed to have been "well acquainted" with Townsend, also stuck to his identification. In short, thirty-five witnesses professed to be certain the prisoner was William Townsend, while a handful of others were less convinced. However, the Crown suffered one humiliating setback when a man who had known William Townsend since childhood, and had briefly run into the fugitive in 1856, said on the stand, "My opinion of the prisoner is that I never saw that gentleman before." The defense followed this by putting on an even larger number of witnesses--all of whom were considered sane and highly respectable people--who swore under oath that whoever the defendant really may have been, he was not William Townsend. Townsend boasted a number of tattoos. The prisoner did not. Townsend had abnormally large joints in his toes. "McHenry" did not. "McHenry's" handwriting did not resemble Townsend's. There was conflicting testimony on whether or not "McHenry" had scars similar to Townsend's.

This time around, the jury had little trouble coming to a consensus, even if it was not one the Crown wished to hear. After a brief deliberation, they announced, "the prisoner at this bar is McHenry, and is not guilty."

Montreal Gazette. October 10, 1857

The defendant had yet to be cleared of the murder of John Nelles, but the prosecution concluded that pursuing that charge was a lost cause. The prisoner was released on £100 bail, but he was never retried. Robert McHenry--or William Townsend--or whoever he was--went on his merry way, and disappeared from history.

In the many years since the two murder trials, Canadian historians have had great fun pondering the question of the prisoner's true identity. Some point to the many positive identifications of him as William Townsend, and assert that this clever criminal put on the performance of a lifetime, bamboozling his way out of a much-deserved date with the gallows. Also, if he truly was McHenry, why did he wait until his second trial to assert that he was in California at the time of the murders? On the other hand, there were seemingly equally credible witnesses who were certain the man was not Townsend. Reportedly, even the Crown prosecutor came to believe he had tried the wrong man for murder.

Just to complicate matters further, there is the view expressed by William Wallace Stewart in his 1931 book "Murders and Mysteries." Stewart proposed that the man twice tried for murder was neither Townsend nor McHenry. Stewart had uncovered a Townsend family tradition that their black sheep had, after going into hiding for two years, escaped across the border, where he fought in the American Civil War and died some years later in Mexico.

Wallace's research failed to find any evidence that there was ever a "Robert J. McHenry" in Scotland during the right time period. He theorized that the man calling himself "McHenry" was a deserter from the British army in Canada. This man had the bad luck to bear a striking resemblance to the murderer, but could not give his real identity for fear of facing the capital charge of desertion.

Was Wallace right? We will never know. There is only one thing anyone can say with certainty about this case: one way or another, William Townsend got away with murder.