CHAPTER
4
During the early morning hours of Friday, January 29, 1932, a fierce blizzard blew in across the Manitoba prairies from the northeast, plunging temperatures to –20°C. The tiny railway town of Elma, about 100 kilometres east of Winnipeg, suffered a whiteout in the grip of the blizzard. But at 6:30 a.m., when Nellie Kachur looked out her farmhouse window, she could clearly see flames shooting up from the next farmhouse. The Sitars’ house was on fire! Nellie’s friends, Martin Sitar, 66, and his wife, Josephine, 55, had lived there for 35 years, and 5 of their 10 children still lived there with them.
Nellie immediately woke her son Mike and told him about the fire. The pair dressed frantically, then raced to the neighbouring farmhouse to see if they could help. They were expecting to find the Sitar family outside, and Nellie was hoping that she and Mike could help them fight the blaze. As they ran the last few paces, they were shocked at how fast the fire had spread. The farmhouse was a mass of blood-red flames roaring from the roof and windows. Thick black smoke enveloped the entire building. Not one person was outside.
It looked like Nellie and Mike were the only lifeline for the Sitars, who were presumably still inside the inferno. Mike acted fast, racing straight to the front door to get in. Strangely, two heavy wooden posts had been jammed against the door from the outside. He couldn’t move them, and that meant he couldn’t get in through the door. More horrifying was the realization that no one inside could get out.
Mike raced over to the nearest window, but the choking smoke prevented him from even getting close. Frantically, he went back to the front door. This time he saw a heavy axe on the family’s woodpile in the front yard. Smashing at the wooden posts, he succeeded in breaking them enough to wedge himself in through the front door. By this point, the main ceiling had crashed down, but Mike nevertheless fought his way in and found an unconscious Josephine Sitar. He managed to drag her outside, where he immediately noticed that she’d suffered a terrible head injury—perhaps from falling debris, he thought. Moments later, Josephine died.
As Mike braced himself to head back into the blazing home, his father, Andrew, arrived on the scene. Together, father and son plunged repeatedly into the collapsing inferno. It was a terrible ordeal for the two prairie farmers. First they brought out Martin Sitar, who was beyond their help. Then they managed to drag out the two youngest children. Jennie, aged seven, was terribly injured and burned and survived for only a short while. Paul, aged four, was almost as badly injured as his sister. He was wavering between consciousness and coma.
The roaring flames and crashing timbers forced the two rescuers out for the last time. It was clear the whole structure was about to collapse. This was the worst moment of all for Mike and Andrew. They could still hear groaning, and they knew that Frank Sitar, 20, and his brothers Walter, 11, and Bert, 10, were trapped inside, beyond anyone’s help. The walls crashed in and the Sitar farmhouse became a funeral pyre for the three boys left inside. Their bodies were recovered later, when the charred ruins had cooled. Despite the selfless bravery of Mike and Andrew, six members of the Sitar family had perished in the fire, and the only survivor, little Paul, was near death.
It was soon obvious that there was a lot more going on in this case than just an accidental fire. As it turned out, all the victims had suffered terrible head injuries, which were clearly not caused by crashing debris. It looked to Mike, Andrew and the police like someone had attacked the family members with an axe and had then set the house on fire. Whoever had done this had also barred the front door from the outside to ensure that none of the Sitars would escape the blaze.
Someone had definitely murdered six people, and probably seven—it appeared that four-year-old Paul Sitar was unlikely to pull through. Manitoba Provincial Police (MPP) officers began to sift through the still-smouldering ashes, looking for any evidence they could find.
Then, amazingly, the police were given the information they were seeking, and it came from the lips of young Paul as he slipped in and out of consciousness a few hours after the fire. “Tom did it to us,” he said.
Minutes after uttering these words, Paul was rushed on a special Canadian National train from Elma to Winnipeg, where an ambulance met the train and took him to St. Boniface Hospital.
Back in Elma, officers scoured what remained of the Sitar farmhouse to make sure that Thomas (Tom) Hreshkoski, Martin Sitar’s nephew, hadn’t died in the blaze. The 28-year-old Hreshkoski had been living with the Sitars and working on their farm as a labourer for over a year. Once authorities were certain that Hreshkoski’s remains were not among the debris, they threw out a dragnet for him. It was the largest manhunt to be launched across the Manitoba prairie in years.
The man they were hunting was a Polish immigrant who had been living in Canada for several years, first in Sudbury, Ontario, and then in Winnipeg. While he lived in Sudbury, Hreshkoski had been convicted of assault and served a six-month term in prison. But his time in Winnipeg had been much more peaceful—no one there seemed to realize he had any potential for violence. Nor was there any record of his exhibiting mental problems. He had lived in Winnipeg with two men, one of whom described him as “hardworking, and a man of great strength.” And clearly, his uncle had had no inkling there was any problem. Martin Sitar had given him work and had found him to be a reliable worker who started his chores early each day.
The MPP thought Hreshkoski might have hopped a train to escape the area. If he had moved swiftly, he could have reached the nearby town of Whitemouth and boarded either a Canadian National or Canadian Pacific train, as both had pulled in there since the murder. But when railway staff were contacted, they assured police that no one fitting Hreshkoski’s description had boarded either train. Next, MPP officers set up checkpoints on the road to Hadashville to the south and Lewis to the west.
Once they knew that Hreshkoski hadn’t died in the fire or hopped a train, police began to wonder if he was trying to hide somewhere outdoors. As the blizzard that had blown in early that morning continued, they grew quite certain that he would soon face death from frostbite and exposure. Though Hreshkoski was a heavy-set man with considerable strength, even he would not survive long in such harsh conditions.
The next day, Saturday, shortly after 4 p.m., Paul Sitar died from his head injuries and burns. As the Winnipeg Free Press put it, the death toll of the “maniacal murderer who ran amok in the little household” now stood at seven.
Later that night, authorities thought they had Hreshkoski when a Polish stranger closely matching his description was seen sneaking off a freight train at Carroll, just south of Brandon and hundreds of kilometres west of Elma. The suspect was arrested farther south, in the town of Minto. He was then taken to the cells in Boissevain, where he gave police the marvellously unpronounceable name of Waswle Twerdosrid and claimed he’d never even been to Elma. Meanwhile, the MPP officers in Winnipeg, full of hope, raced to Boissevain. There they quickly established that Twerdosrid was exactly who he said he was. The search for Hreshkoski continued.
In the next three days, word of the huge manhunt spread throughout the southern Manitoba prairie, even as far as a tiny logging camp near the railway town of Contour, 16 kilometres west of Elma. This was lucky for the police. Five days after the massacre, Bob Lawry, a logger in the camp, had heard a strange wailing sound coming from the railway tracks nearby. When he went to investigate, he was shocked to find a heavy-set man with broad shoulders sitting on the ground and crying for food. The man appeared to be badly frostbitten. Lawry half-carried, half-dragged the starving man into the logging camp, where the stranger wolfed down the food offered him.
Suddenly, Lawry remembered the description of the wanted mass murderer. In a flash he realized he’d just captured the most wanted man in Canada. The loggers quickly got word of the capture to Whitemouth. Constable Percy Valder of the MPP instructed the loggers to get the fugitive on the train to Elma, and he’d meet them there. The suspect was far too weak to resist the loggers, and they delivered him to the constable, who promptly arrested him. In no time he was delivered to Winnipeg, where he was promptly locked up in the old provincial jail on Vaughan Street.
This time there was no mistake. This was Thomas Hreshkoski, and he was ready to confess. The words that came from his lips were almost unbelievable. Oh yes, he had slaughtered all seven members of his uncle’s family with an axe. “The devil made me do it,” he told them. Not just the devil. He’d also had evil spirits, ghosts and his own special demon instructing him to kill them.
The details that emerged from the confession were chilling. According to Hreshkoski, the day of the murders was like any other. He had risen early and started on his first chores, which included milking the cows. His Uncle Martin was up and busy as well. The two men carried on with their work until suddenly, Hreshkoski’s special demon spoke inside his head. Hreshkoski went to the barn, fetched an axe and went into the farmhouse.
He killed his uncle first. Then he murdered everyone else as they slept, going methodically from bedroom to bedroom until he was certain all seven family members were dead. Hreshkoski claimed he hadn’t felt any animosity towards his uncle or the rest of the family. They’d treated him well, but he had to obey his demon. The last thing he did before the flames took hold of the house was to take all the bread he could find in the kitchen. And for five days, after building a small camp, he’d wandered around in the cold with only the bread and melted snow for sustenance.
When the police released details of the arrest and confession, the Winnipeg Free Press blasted the story across the front page of the February 3 newspaper, under the huge headline: ‘GHOSTS’ CAUSE OF ELMA CRIMES POLICE STATE FARM HAND ADMITS SLAYING FAMILY.
The next day, Hreshkoski, who by then had been formally charged with Martin Sitar’s murder, was transferred to the provincial jail at Headingley to await examination by a leading psychiatrist. When police sifted through the burned ruins of the Sitar home, they had discovered a blackened axe head and thought they’d found the murder weapon. But Hreshkoski corrected them. No, he said, the axe he’d used was out in the countryside. He’d taken it with him to chop wood so that he could stay warm while he was hiding. He told them precisely where to find it. And they did, five kilometres from the Sitar house, exactly where he said it would be. Still heavily bloodstained, it was in his snow shelter along with a crosscut saw and an overcoat.
Hreshkoski then told an incredible story about the voices of his devils and ghosts. Over and over, he repeated one specific detail that no sane man would likely ever invent. He explained the final orders that had driven him to commit one of Manitoba’s worst-ever massacres were given by his special little demon—his fly.
Hreshkoski’s murder trial opened in March 1932 at the spring assizes. A reporter covering the trial for the Winnipeg Free Press wrote that the accused looked like “some hunted creature with wild staring eyes and a vacant look,” adding that many people thought he was completely insane. Indeed, it was pretty widely felt that he’d be found not guilty because of his obvious psychosis.
Jury members heard that on the day he was arrested Hreshkoski didn’t wait to reach Winnipeg before confessing. He first blurted out everything to Constable Percy Valder, the Whitemouth MPP officer who’d fetched him from the loggers. Valder told the jury he was the first to hear the chilling story, adding that Hreshkoski had told him, “The devil was in my heart before Christmas. The devil told me to kill Martin Sitar and all his family, and then go away and hide in the bushes.”
Even the prosecution’s psychiatrist, Dr. A.T. Mathers, reckoned Hreshkoski hadn’t been in his right mind when he’d wielded his axe. In various interviews, Hreshkoski had told the doctor that he suffered hallucinations. He had been visited by the devil, complete with horns on his head and a tail. Several times on different days, the devil had told him to kill the family. His special little demon had told him the same thing as well.
The jury then heard more amazing testimony from Nick Darowec, a jailbird who shared a cell with the accused. Hreshkoski had told Darowec all about his demon fly. Prior to this conversation, Darowec had already thought that Hreshkoski was odd. After it, he was sure that Hreshkoski was not just odd, but crazy.
The psychiatrist for the prosecution confirmed for the jury that Hreshkoski believed he had a special demon in the form of a large, buzzing black fly. Later, a guard testified that Hreshkoski had tried to commit suicide in his cell two days before one of his court hearings.
All the facts were before the jury, and an insanity verdict was expected right away. But after five hours the jury returned to the courtroom unable to come up with a unanimous decision. The judge sent them away for the night. By the following morning, they had resolved their differences. To many people’s surprise, the jury members dismissed all talk of insanity. They found Thomas Hreshkoski guilty of murder. Justice Adamson pronounced the death sentence and set June 7, 1932, as the date for his execution.
Oddly, Hreshkoski never once claimed insanity as a defence. Yes, he was quick to confess to everyone he met that he had killed the whole Sitar family because his devils had told him to do it. But the devils were his sole motive. Before he went to trial, psychiatric tests had been carried out on him at Winnipeg General Hospital. The MPP later quoted the psychiatrist, saying that the doctor had backed Hreshkoski’s claims that he wasn’t insane. Clearly, the jury listened to the professional.
If Hreshkoski were tried in today’s legal system, a good defence lawyer would most certainly argue insanity on his behalf. If that failed, the lawyer would appeal Hreshkoski’s death sentence to every higher court available. No lawyer today would leave Hreshkoski hanging on the whim of a possible last-minute reprieve from Ottawa. However, it was 1932, and no appeal was lodged on Hreshkoski’s behalf.
On June 7, 1932, Hreshkoski was preparing to undergo his punishment when an unexpected communication arrived from the Department of Justice. At the very last moment, Thomas Hreshkoski’s death sentence was commuted. He was taken away to Stony Mountain Penitentiary to spend the rest of his life in jail.
Could it be that someone in Ottawa realized there must have been some element of insanity in Hreshkoski’s actions? After all, many other killers have been found insane after blaming voices in their heads for prompting their murderous attacks. But Hreshkoski, initially at least, convinced the entire legal system that his demon fly had made him do it.