In August of 1908, Josiah D. German of Elora believed he had a murder mystery to solve. It was a very personal one, because the victim was his younger brother, James B. German. These were the circumstances of James’ death, as reported in Toronto and Guelph newspapers:
James German, “a fair-haired lad with the sunniest of dispositions,” was a CPR brakeman who worked a section of the line in Toronto. On Saturday evening, August 22, he went to Toronto’s Wheat Sheaf Hotel to meet his brother George, an employee of the Grand Trunk Railway. They spent some time together and then George left for work. It was the last time George saw James alive.
James went to see the operator of the North Parkdale train station and was there until 9 p.m. He was not seen again until his mangled body was found along the tracks stretching from the foot of Tecumseh Street to Bathurst Street. The first police investigators on the scene deduced that James’ death had been accidental. They believed he had been struck by a yard engine and tossed onto the next set of tracks where a passing train had run him over and cut him to pieces. The following day would have been his 27th birthday.
George was at his post near Bathurst Street when he heard that someone had been hit by a train. He went to have a look. The part he saw was badly mangled and face-down in the dirt, and at first George didn’t realize it was James. Then he recognized the clothing.
Josiah, who was a CPR passenger conductor in Elora, hurried to Toronto on Sunday morning after getting the terrible news. He looked over the scene of the tragedy and immediately questioned the “accident” story.
“In going over the ground yesterday afternoon,” he said in a newspaper interview, “many things struck me as being significant and peculiar. The first was the distance from Parkdale station to where the body was found and the entire absence of money in Jim’s pocket. The CPR payday was only a few days ago, and he carried a good-sized roll of bills in his left-hand hip pocket. It looks to me as though he had been knocked on the head by some toughs for his money, and his body placed on the tracks … [to] destroy any evidence of foul play.”
Josiah added that his brother was a big man – too big for one assailant to handle easily.
He scoured the ground where the accident was supposed to have happened, looking for signs of a struggle. But pedestrian traffic of people going to and from a nearby factory made it impossible to see any such evidence.
However, at the place where parts of James’ body were found, along with his watch and pieces of clothing, Josiah saw a large pool of blood. He thought it was strange that the watch was still there but the money was gone. Josiah believed that the murderers had taken the money and watch out of James’ pockets, and then cast the watch aside to make it appear as though there had been no robbery.
“No wise man would steal a watch,” he said. “It would tell too clear a tale.”
Bolstering Josiah’s theory was a report that on the same night that James had been killed, some “bad characters” had been seen in the rail yards. Two Grand Trunk railway policemen named William O’Brian and James Balsam had arrested a man named Chester Grey for trespassing and trying break into a boxcar. Another man fled.
Josiah’s story in the papers claiming that James had been murdered drew a lot of attention, which meant the case would require closer examination by the police and the coroner.
At the official inquest held a few days later, Grey stated that James German had been his companion that night. He said James met him at his house where they had a drink of whiskey before heading over to the Parkdale station to speak to the operator there. When they left the station, they decided to go to the Bathurst station to see George, and hitched a ride part of the way on a yard engine.
They were about to catch another ride, Grey continued, when they heard a shot. He looked around and saw a railway constable pointing a gun at them. He ordered them to put up their hands. Then two more constables appeared. Grey said that he and James were standing with their backs to a boxcar and were about to be handcuffed, when James suddenly bolted.
Grey said that one of the constables fired two or three shots but James disappeared in the darkness. Grey thought he might have ducked under a boxcar. He didn’t know if he’d been hit. Grey said he was a yardman employed by the Grand Trunk Railway and so was not trespassing. He denied that they were trying to break into a boxcar. However, Balsam said he’d found a large stone in Grey’s pocket that could have been used to smash open the lock on a boxcar door.
The coroner decided that further inquiry was necessary, so the hearing was resumed a few days later. Josiah now thought there was strong evidence that his brother had been shot, and his body left on the tracks to cover up the deed.
When the inquiry resumed, Constable O’Brian admitted that he had fired two shots in the air – not at James. He said it was common for railway constables to fire warning shots to scare fleeing trespassers and robbery suspects to make them stop. Other witnesses swore they’d heard three shots. A railway foreman said he’d found blood and hair on a locomotive. A doctor who conducted an autopsy on the remains testified that he’d found no evidence of a bullet wound.
The coroner’s jury finally reached a verdict that James German “came to his death through a cause unknown.” It was not a unanimous verdict. Some of the jury members complained they hadn’t been present at the autopsy.
The coroner expressed his dissatisfaction with the verdict, calling it “absurd.” Nonetheless, the case was closed. The cause of James German’s death would remain a mystery. No one was more unhappy about that than Josiah German of Elora.
