Murder in Port Essington! The Murder Case of Loretta Chisholm

Port Essington was a town located on the Skeena River between Prince Rupert and Terrace. Founded in 1871, it has always been a small community.  In 1926 Port Essington had only approximately a few hundred people at most living there. Now, Port Essington is a ghost town.

Port Essington 1915

Loretta Chisholm was a young schoolteacher working in Port Essington in 1926. Described as a very well respected teacher, Loretta was "a real lady". On Sunday, May 23, 1926, Loretta decided to take a walk before breakfast and before she went to church, but people became alarmed when she did not come back in time for breakfast. Port Essington was still a pretty wild territory, and people had warned Loretta about going for walks alone. Not because she might run into foul play, but because she might run into a wolf or bear. Little did they know, young Loretta ran into an animal of the human variety. After a short search was organized, searchers found Loretta.

Loretta Chisholm was murdered that Sunday in 1926. She was only 21 when she fell victim to a brutal attack. She was viciously beaten. Her face was battered and jaw was broken, her chest had been crushed, she sustained significant internal injuries, and moss stuffed down her throat in an attempt to silence her cries.

Joeseph Sankey, a First Nations man, was arrested under suspicion of murdering Loretta. He was arrested within 2 hours of searchers finding Loretta's body. He had been seen walking in the same direction as Loretta shortly after she had passed a boat captain and other witnesses.


After Joeseph was taken into custody, his clothing was found to have small smears of blood on it. A small smear near a chest pocket, that police took to be Loretta's. Joeseph explained that he had a nose bleed at an earlier time after being struck in the face while playing ball, but police believed that he was trying to cover his tracks.

A little girl said she had seen Joeseph earlier and told police that she had seen Joeseph near a "red fence" that Loretta had passed on her walk. Joeseph denied being in the area at the time. Other people that had testified about Joeseph's whereabouts had contradictory information regarding what he was wearing at the time and didn't seem to be able to correctly identify him.

The cannery in Port Essington, 1908

Even with this shaky evidence, it took the jury only approximately two hours to come to their conclusion. Joeseph was found guilty of Loretta's murder and sentenced to death by hanging, and the sentence was to be carried out on February 16.  After the verdict was reached the judge congratulated the jury and told them that they had absolutely come to the right conclusion in this case.

In late 1927 an appeal was made to overturn Joeseph's conviction due to the many issues in his case. The evidence just didn't support that Joeseph was the murder. The blood found on his clothing could be dismissed because Joeseph was witnessed to having a nosebleed at an earlier date while wearing the same clothes he was wearing at the time of the murder. The appeal also alleged that the judge "misdirected the jury", and the crown prosecutions case solely rested on hearsay and circumstance.

The judge presiding on the case did not make an attempt to make sure the child giving testimony understood what giving testimony "under oath" meant. The defense, in this case, said that the testimony given by this child may have been the deciding factor for the jury to convict Joeseph. Furthermore, the defense requested that the venue be changed to Vancouver or New Westminster rather than Prince Rupert.

A street in Port Essington, 1900

The appeal later states that the statement that was given to police by Joeseph, that was used against him in court, "is most unsatisfactory". The statement was put down in writing only after the fourth questioning, which took place a day after the initial questioning. The defense questioned why his initial statement wasn't recorded and why it took four interrogations before any record was made.

During the appeal trial, in an effort to dispute witness testimony, the defense did an experiment to see if the little girl who stated she saw Joeseph by the red fence could have actually seen him from where she was positioned. They determined that she would not have had a clear line of sight and could not have seen Joeseph. In another experiment defense also discovered that the girl needed glasses, she could not possibly have been able to correctly identify Joeseph at that distance even if she had a clear view.

In the defenses address to the jury, they also stressed the fact that "not a hair on the girls head nor a shred of her clothing was found on the accused despite the obvious fact that a terrific struggle must have taken place".

On Saturday, June 9th, 1928 after more than 2 years in custody, a jury acquitted Joeseph, and he walked away a free man.

Interestingly enough, in 1930 a man named Sigurd Jussilla, a native of Finland, was arrested for an unrelated murder. When RCMP searched his cabin after he had been arrested, some of Loretta's jewelry was found hidden among Sigurd's possesions. Sigurd was in the Port Essington area at the time that Loretta was murdered. There was only one way he could have those items in his house. Sigurd was later found legally insane and deported back to Finland.

Thoughts

I hadn't heard of this case before I started researching it, to be honest. It is an extremely interesting case of a near miscarriage of justice in Canadian legal history, but if they had executed Joeseph, then found that evidence that pointed to Sigurd being the murderer, I guarantee that this case would be one I had heard of before.

The murder of Loretta Chisholm was brutal and horrific, but it was almost even worse. If Joeseph's appeal had not been granted or if he had not been acquitted, then we would have executed the wrong man.

It seems in this case like Joeseph's guilt was decided far earlier than his actual conviction. Even with contradictory, circumstantial evidence and hearsay, Joeseph was still convicted. Luckily the legal system decided to take another look at his case and decided that there was just not enough evidence pointing to Joeseph as being the murderer of Loretta Chisholm.

If Sigurd had not have been arrested for another murder and his house searched I think it is very likely that we would never know who killed the school teacher Loretta Chisholm.

Thank you for taking the time to read the story of Loretta Chisholm and Joeseph Sankey, a case in Canadian legal history that could have been exponentially more tragic than it was.

See you next time.


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