The Best New True Crime Stories. Mitzi Szereto
to get a look at the now-notorious three-time widow was waiting at the Oxford County Court House and the jail when Hammond and Rogers arrived with their prisoner.
The next morning, after a brief appearance before a magistrate for a formal reading of the charge, Elizabeth was permitted to speak to the press. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she told a reporter from the Sentinel-Review. “I’m going out of this a free woman… They can say lots of things about a person. Now it’s up to them to prove it… They may keep me here for twelve months, but I’m coming out a free woman.”
A preliminary hearing was held on June 24. Elizabeth was represented by Frank Regan, KC (King’s Counsel), of Toronto, one of the most high-profile criminal lawyers in Ontario. Assisting him was another top attorney, Charles W. Bell, KC, of Hamilton. There was little doubt at the start of the hearing that Elizabeth would be committed to stand trial at the Fall Assizes (criminal trial sessions held periodically in a judicial district), so Regan and Bell began to lay the groundwork for their defense. Testimony given by Isabella had raised an intriguing development. She said that she, not her mother, who was out at the time, had telephoned the drugstore and ordered the arsenic. It was her English accent Keith had heard. Moreover, Isabella said that her stepfather had told her to make the call and to not tell her mother. When Victor King made the delivery, Isabella said, she had paid for it with two dimes her stepfather had given her. Then he had gone into the barn with the arsenic, saying he was going to kill rats.
Chief Constable A. T. Moore of the Woodstock police contradicted Isabella’s statement. He said that when he interviewed her, she claimed she didn’t know who had ordered the arsenic. However, Moore hadn’t written Isabella’s answers down at the time he questioned her and had to quote her from memory, leaving open the possibility that he was not repeating her exact words. Regan thought that it wouldn’t be unusual for a frightened, confused teenage girl to be inconsistent in her answers to questions in such a traumatizing situation.
Regan and Bell had a theory that Tyrell Tilford had not been murdered but had committed suicide. He had poisoned himself, intending to frame his wife, who he believed was unfaithful. They thought it was quite possible that Elizabeth was unaware that arsenic was even in the house. Their task would be to convince a jury.
The trial began on September 24 before Mr. Justice A. C. Kingstone and lasted nine days. Prosecuting for the Crown was Special Attorney Cecil L. Snyder. He intended to portray the defendant as a cold-blooded, calculating woman who had killed for money. Elizabeth had already been convicted in the court of public opinion. When the newspapers reported that no trace of arsenic or any other poison had been found in William Walker’s body, most of the people in Woodstock still held to the belief that Elizabeth had murdered him.
Members of the Tilford family were the Crown’s principal witnesses. They said that Elizabeth had become involved with Bill Blake, a prosperous man who owned two farms. Tyrell’s sister, Annie, testified that her late brother had complained to her just two days before he died that Blake and Elizabeth had been “kicking up a terrible racket” in his own home.
The Tilfords said that Elizabeth wanted a separation from Tyrell and had demanded to be reimbursed for the CAD$1,900 she had put into their house. They claimed it wasn’t enough for her that she was the sole beneficiary of Tyrell’s will. She had threatened to take James Tilford to court and “get every cent he has,” they said.
William Tilford said he’d gone to Tyrell’s house when he first heard his brother was ill and found him in bed. He and Elizabeth were both sitting at the bedside when Tyrell said, “It’s no use, Bill. My wife has been giving me poison.”
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