Who Killed Janet Smith?: The 1924 Vancouver Killing That Remains Canada's Most Intriguing Unsolved Murder

David Mattison is a librarian with the B.C. Provincial Archives and
Records Services Library.

Edward Starkins, a Vancouver freelance writer, has been researching the almost legendary Janet Smith murder case for several years. Janet Smith was a British nanny in a Shaughnessy Heights (Vancouver) home who was murdered in 1924. The chief suspect was a Chinese houseboy, who was kidnapped and psychologically tortured for a confession. Following police bungling over evidence (including the corpse itself, which was embalmed before an autopsy could be performed), and despite the testimony gathered at two inquests, the murderer was never caught. Besides the houseboy, the only other serious suspect put forth by the gossipmongers was the son of Lieutenant-Governor Walter Nichol.

The thoroughness of Starkins’ research is evident at every turn, but, alas, he has no conclusive answer for the question he poses in his title. The most startling new evidence concerns Janet Smith’s employer, Frederick Lefevre Baker, whom Starkins characterizes as a drug-dealer, information the author gleaned from British documents. Written for a general audience, the book provides no footnotes, and sources for each chapter are summarized at the end of the book. There are several pages of photographs, most of which are portraits of the principal characters. The index is excellent and covers both names and subjects, including some obscure topics such as “aniline dyes” and “chlorate of potash.” No library in Canada with a strong collection of crime history will want to be without this book.