The Wigwam Murder — M.J. Trow

The Wigwam Murder - as the case against August Sangret came to be known - was one of the most brilliant pieces of detection and forensic science then on record. Drs Keith Simpson, Eric Gardner and Gerald Roche Lynch worked together to present a comprehensive body of work that convinced and shocked the jury. It was the first time that a human skull had been produced in a British court room. It belonged to Joan Pearl Wolfe, a nineteen-year-old runaway and vagrant who hung around Canadian army camps, particularly in the Hankley Common, Surrey, area. The man who went to the gallows in April 1943 for the capital crime of murder was August Sangret, a French-Canadian Metis Indian. Despite the amazing forensic work, the evidence against him was purely circumstantial. 'No, sir. I never killed that girl. Somebody did it and I guess I will have to take the rap,' he said. In this compassionate re-telling of the short and tragic relationship between the two young misfits, M J Trow builds on his reputation as a chronicler of human failings and bringer of the light of day into the cold pragmatism of the courtroom. With a foreword and afterword to give the 21st century reader some additional insight into both the time of the murder and the time of the original research of twenty years ago, this book is a gripping and at times heartrending tale of two lost people in a world torn by war.