A good mystery has no bounds or borders, that we already know. This one is as good a mystery as we have seen for a while. I picked it up from the folks over at Listverse.
The Redpath Mansion
Another century-old cold case concerns the 1901 murder of Ada Maria Mills Redpath and her son, Clifford, in their luxurious Montreal mansion. Ada was an extremely wealthy widow who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Her son, on the other hand, was as healthy as a horse and in the process of preparing to take the Canadian bar exam. One newspaper speculated that Clifford couldn’t handle the stress of the exam and murdered his mother before shooting himself. Another paper claimed that the widow Redpath suffered from such severe insomnia that she tried to take her own life. When her son intervened, he was accidentally shot to death by his own mother.
Strangely, the coroner wrote his report on the case from details given by a doctor who wasn’t even at the murder scene. On such evidence, his report concluded that Clifford was an epileptic and must have had an episode of temporary insanity on the day he and his mother died. Even stranger is the fact that police were never called to the mansion. The tragedy happened on a Thursday evening and less than 48 hours later the burials were done and dusted. In a matter of weeks, life in the neighborhood resumed as usual. No one mentioned the murders again.
The Redpath Mansion murders remain one of the most fascinating mysteries in Canadian history.
Call me crazy, but this whole thing just reeks of some kind of cover-up. Seems to me that the whole thing was haphazardly handled from the start, ya know? I'm thinking there has to be more than just one mystery to this story. What do you think?
Coffee out on the patio this morning.
