thought that we had accounted for all the people who had been in the vehicles, but we were wrong. We soon realized that one of the men from the second vehicle was missing.
About this time, a tow truck arrived on the Lillooet side of the hole and began the task of lifting the police car out.
Daylight arrived and we were able to examine the scene more thoroughly. We searched the mud and debris below the hole for the missing man but failed to find any trace of him. He was familiar with the area but no tracks could be seen below the highway where he might have walked out. A patrol to his home learned that he had not been seen for a few days and his family believed he was still in Lillooet. One of the crash victims said he thought he had seen him crawling away into the darkness toward the Lillooet side of the hole. This information caused us to closely examine the hole where the police car had just been lifted out. The body of the missing man was pressed into the mud at the bottom of this hole. In the total darkness and confusion he had crawled through the mud until he was at the base of the wall of the hole on the Lillooet side. He had probably just managed to struggle to that location when the police car fell into the hole on top of him.
In the days after the slide, when talking with the three drivers, we pieced together the events of that evening. The occupants of the first car had been visiting with friends in Lillooet and they were late getting on the road for the drive home. They came around a bend in the road and saw the blackness of the hole; the driver at first mistook it as a new section of asphalt. He took no evasive action and suddenly fell into the hole at about fifty miles per hour. His car flew across most of the very loose mud and crashed into the relatively solid opposite side wall of the hole. The heavy front end of the car left the road first and therefore fell farther than the rear, leaving the car at a downward angle when it crashed. This caused the passengers to be thrown toward the upper edge of the windshield, and resulted in fatal head and neck injuries to the woman who had been seated in the middle of the front seat.
The driver of the second car had been in bed at his home near Lillooet when he was awakened by two Native men who asked him to give them a ride to Lytton. The two were quite drunk and the driver was new to the area; against his better judgement, and partly out of fear of the two, he agreed to do as they asked. He came around the curve and saw what he thought was a new patch of asphalt but, realizing what it was an instant later, he slammed on the brakes and steered left. This car went over the edge at a lower speed than the first and it landed on its front end in the mud with just enough momentum to go end over end to where it stopped close beside the first car, upside down and facing back in the direction it had come from. The driver had a broken femur and was in severe pain. He had suggested to his two passengers that they stay in his car, but they chose to crawl out. One of them crawled to the wall on the Lillooet side of the hole.
The police driver came around the curve and saw the black area. He was familiar with the road and braked very hard, locking all four wheels. The police car screeched toward the hole, slowing rapidly; the front wheels went over the edge and it seemed for an instant that the car would stop, but it continued to slide forward on its frame and it dropped straight down into the mud, killing the man who had crawled to the wall of the hole. The impaired driving suspect in the rear of the police car fell forward against the security screen and broke his collar bone.
The police car driver had only enough time to assess the situation in his car and look around with his flashlight when I called him on the radio. He then left the car and fought his way through the mud up to the highway, to prevent any further mayhem.
The cause of the slide was a faulty drainage culvert under the roadway. The pipe was of minimal size, only required to handle the small amounts of water from the hillside above the highway. The water ran down to the highway ditch and then along the ditch to the culvert. The unstable ground had shifted over the years to the extent that the uphill end of the culvert had become lower than the other; the shifting clay had then built up inside the culvert until it was completely clogged. The water had accumulated in the ditch and permeated into the road and the ground under it, finally resulting in the slide.
The highway hole was filled and repaved, and additional drainage culverts were installed. The highway maintenance people were cautioned to keep a close watch for water pooling in the ditches. Within a few months, funds were made available to provide a Breathalyzer and a trained operator for Lillooet detachment.
The Nelson Axe Murders
The city of Nelson is a beautiful place with a rich history of mining and forestry. The mountains throughout the West Kootenay area have abundant mineral deposits, many of which have been mined over the years. Signs of mining can be seen along any roadway in the region, ranging from small shafts driven into the rock with hand drills and explosives, to large ventures where ore was taken out on underground narrow gauge railway tracks. Some of the mineral veins were still being worked in the early 1960s, and a few are still active today. Most of the mining activity was for lead zinc ore, known as galena, which was fed into the smelter operations in Trail. Nelson had a population of about ten thousand in the year 1900, and this census remained almost unchanged right up to the 1960s. As one mining venture petered out, another would be opened and the workers would drift around the district, nearly always able to find work. Local wags explained the unchanging population numbers by saying that each time a baby was born, some guy left town.
The mining areas of the world always attract a few prospector-promoters who prey on each other and on anyone else whom they can con into believing in their latest fabulously rich find. These types do most of their prospecting in bars and lounges, looking for victims with a few dollars from which they can be parted. There was an abundance of these barroom prospectors in Nelson in the early sixties. Conversations one would overhear in Nelson watering holes were nearly always about the latest strike that had been made on some mountain not far away. Most of these finds were claimed to be galena ore so rich that a man could not lift a water-bucket full. When interest was shown from a bystander (victim), the conversation became very secretive and furtive glances were cast about the room as bits of disinformation were carefully leaked out. Numbers were whispered about the percentage of silver in the ore sample and the potential tonnage of the new find. After a great deal of probing to see if the mark could be trusted, a chunk of very heavy, shiny black ore would be produced from a pocket or briefcase. The ore samples were very guarded, usually kept under the table, and the mark was only allowed to hold them for a few seconds. Most of these very rich ore samples had found their way out of a commercial mine in a worker’s pocket and had been traded in the bar for a few drinks.
Three promoters had been working as a team during the summers of the early sixties. They favoured the Kootenay region and centred their activities in Nelson. In the winter they drifted away to sponge room and board with relatives or others who did not realize their friends were such shady characters.
During their promoting/conning activity in the later part of one summer they became acquainted with a man who had immigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia. Petre came here shortly after the Second World War and settled in Nelson for reasons that we were unable to determine; he had no family there or anywhere outside Czechoslovakia. He had kept himself employed at a variety of labour jobs and he was a skilled stonemason who took great pride in his work. Those who were fortunate enough to learn of his skills and to find and hire him were rewarded with an everlasting example of fine European craftsmanship. His work was remarkable, with perfect fitting and immaculate pointing. Stonemasonry was not in great demand at that time, however, and Petre was unable to communicate in English beyond the most basic requirements; these combined problems left him to seek work at whatever hard labour he could find.
Petre was a willing worker. Those who hired him were often amazed at how he would work from dawn to dark with only short breaks for meals or rest. He kept track of his hours and requested payment only for each full hour that he had worked. His attention to detail was as obvious in menial tasks as it was in his masonry. He was a very proud man.
Petre lived an exceedingly frugal existence.
