Eight day bridge

On May 20, 1947, a lifeless female body was found in flower-patterned pajamas and a male shirt, face down on the banks of the River Severn near Lake Muskoka, Canada, in a few inches of water. Meanwhile, there was an ignited house 40 meters away.

Around the mysterious death of 23-year-old Christina Kettlewell, the investigation revealed more and more oddities, such as an all-round love triangle, a suicide attempt, a murder attempt, an escape, and a possible insurance fraud.

The love triangle

A series of strange events began on May 12, 1947, and in the weeks before. The woman secretly married a 26-year-old veteran named Jack Kettlebell in Toronto. Two weeks before the wedding, Christina disappeared without a trace with her partner, and it is not known what they were doing at the time. The parents of the young people only found out about the marriage when the couple went on their honeymoon. They spent the first few days of their honeymoon in an apartment in Toronto, then set out for Severn Falls on May 17 to spend the next few days there in a 5-room forest cottage. There would be nothing strange about that, but it turned out that there was a man named Ronald Barrie all along who later said they wanted to spend the whole summer there in threes. It also turned out that this man was with the couple even when they disappeared for two weeks before the wedding. Ronald and Jack were friends and business associates and also lived together before the wedding. So Ronald arrived with the young couple at the forest house where Christina died 3 days later.

Christina's father suspected there was an intimate relationship between Jack and Ronald, and Jack admitted it in his confession after the fire. Later, however, the husband claimed he had been forced to say so.

At trial, the purpose of the investigation was to find out if Ronald and Jack had anything to do with the woman's death. None of them were suspects, and Ronald didn't even have a lawyer at first. Only at first...

Strange insurance

Before the couple disappeared for two weeks, they both signed a $ 5,000 life insurance policy. Oddly enough, Ronald Barrie is the beneficiary of both life insurance policies. In addition, it was part of the insurance contract that if they died in an accident, the man would receive double. Berrie also signed a home insurance contract for the holiday home just before the fire. How many coincidences. Christina’s precious wedding ring was never found.

A woman named Emma Barker, 9 days after Christina’s death, claimed to have been present at the wedding and said the wedding ring had been lent to Christina by a certain Mrs. Thomas.

What happened on the day Christina died?

Police interrogated Ronald Barrie for a total of 13 hours on May 22, at the end of which he wrote a 3,000-word testimony. The case was popular in the media, so much so that many even asked the two men for autographs.

Ronald testified the following about that particular day: Christina got up at 8 a.m., made porridge and cocoa. The man had to leave and return around noon. Entering the house, he saw Jack asleep, tried to wake him up but failed. Meanwhile, Christina just stared out the window and asked Ronald for a pen to write a letter to a certain Mrs. Thomas. Barrie went out of the house to sunbathe and went back to the house around 6pm and found Jack on the couch unconscious with a head injury, Christina sitting quietly in a chair. Ronald covered Jack with the blanket and took him out of the house and he noticed a fire in the kitchen. He managed to wake Jack outside and went back to the house for Christina but couldn't find her there.

Not long after, a neighbor arrived to help see the fire. Ronald asked two anglers for help and took Jack to their boat across the river and took him to the hospital. He also informed the police on the way. An hour later, the cottage was completely burned down. Jack's doctor said the man didn't remember anything that happened that day and the man claimed that too. He later said he still remembered how they had lunch and then felt sick. By the way, Christina had tried to commit suicide twice before and the second time she had tried to poison Jack's food too.

The investigation

The case began to darken as the evidence came to light. For example, a letter Christina wrote to Ronald before the wedding. The letter said the woman was trying to poison herself. She also suggests in the letter that she wants to kill not only herself but also Jack because she could not bear to have the man with another woman. Christina wrote her last letter the day before her death and addressed it to Mrs Thomas. In this letter, the woman writes that Ronnie is out there somewhere with the boat, but by the time he returns it will all be over. This is weird because Christina wanted to ask Ronald to send the letter. But if it was all over by the time the man returned, how would he have asked for it? The question also arises as to how the letters could have come out after the whole cottage had burned down. And the answer is that Ronald Berrie saved the letters from the burning house. Strange, right? Maybe he knew these letters might still be useful to him.

Only Ronald knew about the woman's suicide and murder intentions, Jack heard about them at the trial at the first time.

It also turned out that Berrie had lent the woman a lot of money. Christina claimed to have returned $ 12,000 to her but she did not accept it. Then the woman gave Ronald a check for $ 12,000 on the day of his death, which was seized by police. However, it was not clear what the woman needed that much money for. Ronald claims that a year earlier, 5 men raped the woman at a dance event, and then these men blackmailed the woman by telling the stories to the girl’s father. Whether the violence actually took place has not been established.

Christina's sister, Helen, said she was afraid of both Jack and Ronald, and she even said she thought they gav drugs for Christina for the wedding. Helen and their other sister also went to Jack's apartment the day before the wedding to talk Christina out of the wedding.

Finding Christina

Three hours after the fire, Christina was found on the river bank by a man who later testified that on May 3, the two men and the woman had once visited the cottage. No injuries were found on Christina's body or anything that would indicate that she was a victim of murder. The investigation found she drowned in shallow water and found traces of codeine in her stomach. The doctor performing the autopsy said this substance quickly disappears from the body after death. This suggests that a very large dose was ingested before her death.

Christina was found barefoot, which is strange because the road to the shore is rocky, bushy, yet there were no scratches on her feet. The other question is how the woman could have gone out of the burning house unnoticed while the two men were nearby.

A police major who helped put out the fire later said he went down to the river several times for water. Where the body was later found. But no matter how many times he went there for water, he saw no corpse. So under the fire, the woman couldn't be there yet. The fire lasted until 7pm and Christina was found at 9pm, so she landed on the river between 7pm and 9pm, a mystery how.

The case of Christina's death remains unresolved.

Jack later remarried and had a child. He never told his family about Christina and her death. Nevertheless, his wife accidentally found the case during family tree research. Ronald moved away years later and no one has ever heard of him since.

Closing thoughts

What do you think might have happened to the 3 people that day? Did Christina want to kill herself and Jack? Maybe Ronald tried to kill them both and make the traces disappear? But if he wanted to kill them, then why did he save Jack in the end? Did the two men plan to kill Christina together for insurance money? I find that conceivable, too. Why would Christina hit Jack in the head instead of giving him a large dose of codeine? Jack had to be injured to make the story of the woman trying to kill themselves credible. Of course, they could prove this with the strangely saved letters. But where was Christina during the fire? Who and how took her ashore unnoticed?

Sources: thestar.com , digitalarchive , namnab.com