Wilbert Coffin
Hi, today I’ll try to inform you about a wrongfully convicted person, Wilbert Coffin. Let’s start!
Coffin met up with the dead people on June 10 while driving a friend’s truck into the bush. Their truck had broken down and he gone Richard Lindsey to the Gaspé town to buy a new fuel pump. Coffin said he drove Lindsey back to the camp and two other Americans were there in a yellow jeep.
They had dinner together and Coffin promised to look in on the Lindsey party in a few days. According to Coffin, Lindsey paid him $40 — a twenty and two ten dollar — and the younger Lindsey gave him a pocket knife for his son.
On June 12 Coffin said he returned to find the camp, it’s deserted, but he found for Lindsey’s truck. He waited a few hours and, when no one returned, he took the fuel pump and Claar’s valise, which contained a shirt, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of socks, blue jeans and two towels.
In June 1953, three Pennsylvania men on a bear hunting trip in the Gaspé region are reported missing. They are found dead at the end of July, deep in the woods, about sixty kilometers from the closest town. One of the primary suspects is 42 years old Wilbert Coffin, a lumberjack, prospector and occasional hunting guide. Because he’s the last person seen with the victims. Creating suspicions was the facts that he is found with a lot of several objects belonging to the American hunters, and that even if he is supposedly in debt, he has been paying for a lot purchases in cash lately.
First trial held in — Quebec Court of Queen’s Bench in July 1954.
He was accused of ambushing the men and stealing more than $600. One of the evidence used in trial was Coffin borrowed such a gun , 32–40 calibre rifle, in May 1953 and hadn’t returned it.
A witness told the jury he saw a muzzle of a gun in the back of Coffin’s truck when he came out of the bush June 12. These evidences weren’t first-degree evidence because there wasn’t any. So second-degree evidence was always used.
In trial, Coffin said that stealing some of the victims’ luggage. But he maintained his innocence.
Coffin was sentenced to death on Aug. 5, 1954. The sentence was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. There, a majority of justices affirmed the judgments of the lower courts. But had seven stays of execution over the next 18 months while courts rejecting his appeals. The same evidences used in this trials.
Coffin executed by hanging at Montreal’s Bordeaux Prison on February 10, 1956.
There is no compensation awarded yet because it is not certain that Coffin was innocent but I think he is innocent, what do you think, is he innocent or not?
