It was predictable that the flamboyant John Sedgwick Cowper would have an equally colourful, aggressive lawyer representing him when the preliminary hearing on his criminal libel charge opened on June 29. That lawyer was Gordon Wismer, young, brash, publicity conscious, at this time making a name for himself in legal circles, and happy to be involved in a high-profile controversy that would garner attention. As well as being Cowper’s legal counsel on this occasion, he was also associated with him in business, as Wismer was solicitor for Empire Mines, a project in which the newspaperman held a major interest. Fiercely Liberal, Wismer was later elected to the legislature and became attorney general in the government of Byron (Boss) Johnson. Like Manson before him, Wismer was to become a controversial attorney general, although the reasons for his notoriety were quite different. Wismer took to being driven around Vancouver in police cars to visit late-night clubs and mingle with the crooks and gang leaders of the era. He was closely tied to a major scandal in the 1950s when a royal commission found the Vancouver police department was graft ridden and its chief, Walter Mulligan, a close friend of Wismer’s, was in the pay of gamblers. For four decades Gordon Wismer was the Liberals’ Mr. Fixit both in and out of office, at the provincial and federal level, a man with connections to all segments of society from Shaughnessy to skidroad.
Cowper’s defence was one of Wismer’s early cases, and it was simple. The newspaperman had believed the stories of Barbara Orford, even when she said that instead of receiving revelations about an orgy at Osler Avenue in a dream, she had actually been there. Cowper felt it was his duty as a newspaperman to disclose her allegations, particularly when the investigation seemed stalled and she had been given the cold shoulder by the police, Manson, and special sleuth Jackson.
Fred Baker was first up in the witness box before Magistrate J.A. Findlay and another standing-room-only crowd that watched with fascination as Gordon Wismer met his match. In all the hundreds of thousands of words printed in the stories that filled the papers for more than a year, Fred Baker received consistently favourable coverage, and he did not bow when Wismer decided Cowper’s best defence was an attack on him. Wismer played on every slice of speculation, every rumour, even the slightest suggestion that Baker might have been involved in supplying illicit drugs or having sex with Smith.
Throughout the wide-ranging assault, Baker was poised and unflustered, exhibiting a steely determination to combat the slurs and accusations made against him and his family. His charges of libel against Monica Mason-Rooke, and the more serious one of criminal libel against Cowper, were evidence he would no longer take anything lying down. He might ignore minor rumours, but once they began to damage his business or his family, Fred Baker stood his ground. He was now a businessman of stature in post-war Vancouver with a reputation to protect. The questions raised about drug deals cast an unwanted shadow on his name and character, as well as on other members of his family. There is no doubt that his brother Dick and sister-in-law Blanche, as well as General McRae and the wealthy Mrs. Lefevre, were advising him and were as anxious as he to shed the suspicions they had begun to hear in the drawing rooms and club lounges of Shaughnessy.
As Wismer began his interrogation, Fred Baker confidently and vehemently denied all Barbara Orford’s allegations. The lawyer knew the story of the orgy had already been discounted by Manson and the police, but that was not enough for Wismer, who carefully raised and deliberately asked all the lingering questions about Baker’s commercial involvement with drugs both in England and France before he returned to Vancouver. Baker insisted his importing business was perfectly legal, including a publicized transaction involving the $40,000 sale of narcotics to a Japanese customer. Baker denied a suggestion by Wismer that one of his former partners had been jailed in Europe for dealing in opium. (It was not a partner, but an agent for the company who was jailed.) Baker even kept his temper when Wismer demanded to know if there had been any drugs concealed in furniture that he brought back from France. “Absolutely none,” Baker responded without raising an eyebrow. When Wismer tried another titillating topic, bringing up Orford’s claim that Smith had told her she was pregnant with her employer’s child, Baker bristled and said in steely tones, “Absolutely ridiculous, a malicious lie.”
Wismer went a little too far in bending the facts when he alleged that during the second inquest Archibald Hunter had testified that the embalming of Smith’s body had wiped out any evidence of the pregnancy. Baker’s lawyer, Pat Fraser, immediately interrupted and shot back, “Dr. Hunter made no such statement.”
By this time Magistrate Findlay had had enough of the unabashed Wismer and told the lawyer that his statements besmirched not only Baker’s name but also Janet Smith’s, and she wasn’t there to defend herself. The preliminary hearing wound up quickly, with the magistrate committing Cowper for trial at the fall assizes. These were now developing into an almost all-Smith event, to be presented case by case, chapter by chapter, in a saga of epic proportions.
Outside the courtroom, Fred Baker did his best to step out of the limelight and stated that he had let gossipy socialite Monica Mason-Rooke off the hook, dropping his libel charge against her. Baker explained that the young woman had admitted she knew nothing of a party at his house the night before Smith died. She had merely exaggerated some previously heard gossip and had not intended to speak disparagingly of him or Mrs. Baker when she had talked about the case. Baker said that the flood of stories and gossip about a party were “utterly without foundation” and were by now untraceable. He explained that at first he thought the rumours would subside and fade away, but they did not. Then a friend alerted him to the tale told by Mason-Rooke to her friends. It was the first authentic report he had received about the source of the persistent rumours, and it had led to his charge against her. All was now forgiven, he said, as the young woman had admitted there was no truth to her statements. His Shaughnessy friends were pleased with his decision, and Baker said everyone would soon see there was no truth to the story because of the evidence that would emerge from Cowper’s upcoming appearance in court.
The irrepressible Cowper still carried an advertisement in his paper that touted the clairvoyant powers of Orford, trying to capitalize on her brief fling at fame, or perhaps infamy. She gave a lecture in the Empress Theatre billed as “The Girl Who Knew.” Admission was 80 cents, 55 cents, and 30 cents for different levels of seating, and she was introduced by one of the city’s other leading clairvoyants. However, she attracted only a sparse crowd to what proved to be her only stage appearance. The debunking of her claims in the Smith affair had ended her brief career as a newsmaker.
Before June ran out, the Sun opened up another can of worms by writing about meetings held in mid-April when houseboy Wong Foon Sing was in the kidnappers’ hands. The paper reported the talks had been initiated by Jackson during a meeting with the Chinese consul and Wong Gow, Wong Foon Sing’s brother, who insisted that Harry Senkler must be consulted before any further discussions were held. Jackson then approached Wong’s lawyer, asking if he would agree to be taken to see Wong Foon Sing in captivity if it could be arranged. Jackson also asked Senkler to help the Chinese consul compose a letter urging the houseboy to tell the whole truth and all that he knew about Janet Smith’s death. Senkler refused to go along with the outrageous proposition. There’s little doubt that the wily lawyer leaked news of the meeting to the press, enjoying Jackson’s discomfort when the story hit the streets. The special investigator had his own version of events, but had to agree with the basic facts in the newspapers while maintaining he had not known who had seized Wong or where he was being held. Jackson insisted that he had hoped to work through Cowper, who knew where the houseboy was being held.