SG17 Murder in Paradise.Pdf
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INTRIGUE Sir Harry Oakes, the Bahamian Yankee One Mainer’s path to fortune, knighthood, and murder. t BY RON SOODALTER n early July 1943, the world’s attention was di- verted from World War II by a shocking murder. Sir Harry Oakes–Maine native, adventurer, gold prospector, philanthropist, British baronet, and one of the wealthiest men of his time–had been found brutally slain in his bedroom at West- LD BAHAMAS.COM O bourne, the mansion on his rambling Bahamas estate. In the investigation that followed, justice would be stymied by po- lice ineptitude and corruption, the indictment and trial of the wrong man, the shadow of the American Mafia, accusations of ritual killing, and the incessant meddling of officials all the way up to the former King of England. Despite the number of possible suspects who stood to benefit from Sir Harry’s death, Above: Harry Oakes pictured with the Duke of Windsor in the Bahamas. The Duke was appointed governor of the islands in 1940, following his abdication from the throne the quest for his killer was inexplicably terminated. The mur- PASSION AND PARADISE - ABC (3) of England; Left: Passion and Paradise put the mystery on the silver screen in 1989. der remains one of the modern age’s most fascinating un- SUMMERGUIDE 2 0 1 7 1 7 1 In 2008, Sir Harry’s car (below) was auctioned at Bonhams for circa $250,000. Other notable owners of the Hispano-Suiza H6B “Sedanca de Ville” include apéritif millionaire Andre Dubonnet, P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Evelyn Waugh, the Mahajarah of Alwar, Anthony Gustav de Roth- schild, King Carol of Romania, Whitney Straight, The Shah of Persia, General Franco of Spain, and Pablo Picasso. For auction results of Sir Harry’s car, see www.bonhams.com/auctions/16337/lot/118/] Above: In the 1989 movie Passion and Paradise, Armand Assante adroitly captures the dastardly Alfred de Marigny, while Rod Steiger is solid as a rock as Sir Harry Oakes. Right: A chilling image of Oakes taken from the crime scene. Sir Harry was found with his face covered in blood from four puncture wounds to the left of his head that reportedly fractured his skull. solved mysteries. expected to gain a fortune and die a violent Klondike,” ruled. death “with his boots on.” Oakes’s youthful Young Harry adapted well to his rough- THE EARLY YEARS prediction, melodramatic though it might and-tumble environs, but he made no arry Oakes’s life would not seem have been, would eventually prove accurate strikes. Restless, he spent over a decade out of place as the subject of a on both counts. roaming the world on his obsessive search Jack London novel, although his In the Yukon, Harry fought to survive for riches, prospecting in California, Cen- early years gave no indication of the tri- not only the extremes of weather–it was not tral America, Australia, New Zealand, and umph and tragedy that were to come. uncommon for temperatures to plunge to Africa, before returning to North Amer- He was born to a financially comfortable 60 degrees below zero–but the violent way ica after hearing gold was being mined in family in Sangerville, Maine, on Decem- of life there. The Klondike during the Gold Northern Ontario. ber 23, 1874, the third of five children. A Rush was the last bastion of the Wild West. His quest finally paid off in 1912, when decade later, the family moved to Foxcroft Crime was common, and gangsters such as he discovered a massive seam of gold be- to allow Harry and his two brothers to at- “Soapy” Smith, the notorious “King of the neath Kirkland Lake. This strike would ONHAMS AUCTIONS; BAHAMAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY; tend the prestigious Foxcroft Academy. B After graduating, Harry entered Bowdoin College, where he earned his bachelor’s Sir Harry lay dead upon degree. He went on to study medicine at his bed in a grisly state. LD BAHAMAS (3) Syracuse for two years before he was bit- O ten by the gold bug. At 22, hearing tales His body had been of the fabulous strikes being made in the Klondike, he left medical school for Alas- doused in gasoline and ka to pursue a career as a prospector. set alight, covered with He had no doubt of his potential for success. According to Maine folklore, Har- feathers, suggesting a LOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ry confided to a Bowdoin classmate that he ritual killing. C THE BRITISH COLONIAL HOTEL; OLD BAHAMAS; PASSION AND PARADISE - ABC 1 7 2 PORTLAND MONTHLY MAGAZINE INTRIGUE Left: Harry Oakes’s Nassau mansion and the scene of his violent death in 1943; This page: The British Colonial Hotel in Nassau, bought by Oakes in 1932; Below right: Sir Harry Oakes’s daughter, Nancy. prove to be the richest in Canada and World War I French fighter planes. In 2008, the second-richest in the Western Hemi- Harry’s very car (see photo, left page) sold sphere, making Harry one of the wealthiest at a Bonhams auction for nearly a quarter men in the world. His Lake Shore Mines of a million dollars. would ultimately net him the staggering sum of $60,000 per day (the equivalent of arry was magnanimous with his $720,000 per day in today’s currency). wealth, rewarding those who’d Harry set about enjoying the good life helped him and launching a num- that so many years of hard work and depri- ber of local civic-improvement projects into vation had earned him. On a world cruise which he poured millions of dollars. Over in 1923, the 48-year-old Oakes met Eu- time, however, he came to resent what he nice MacIntyre, a tall, attractive Austra- considered the exorbitant taxes–$17,500 a lian some 25 years his junior, and they soon day–that the Canadian government levied married. Over the next ten years, the union upon him. In 1935, he left Canada, taking would produce five children. his wife and children to live in the Carib- Five years later, he moved his grow- bean city of Nassau, on the island of New built an air base, polo field, country club, ing family to Niagara Falls, Ontario, where Providence in the Bahamas. and golf course. He also purchased and he became a Canadian citizen. He built a In those days, Nassau was the quiet improved the local hotel. He added a wing 35-room mansion, created a private golf backwater capital of the British colony and to the hospital, provided public transpor- course, and purchased one of the most a bastion for well-heeled whites in a place tation, employed a large number of the lo- extraordinary cars of his time. With its where abject poverty existed alongside fab- cals, and initiated programs to address 12-cylinder engine and red leather seats, ulous wealth. As he had when he first ar- the poverty in which many of the island- the hand-built 1928 Hispano-Suiza H6B rived in Niagara Falls, Harry set about im- ers were living. For his largesse, the Crown “Sedanca de Ville” was large, elegant, and proving conditions on the island for both awarded him a baronetcy, whereupon he powered with the same engines used by its native poor and its privileged whites. He became Sir Harry Oakes. SUMMERGUIDE 2 0 1 7 1 7 3 INTRIGUE Right: The Willows in 1943. Today, the exterior remains largely the same as in Harry Oakes’s day, but the building is now part of Atlantic Oceanside Hotel and Event Center. Above: A bedroom suite at The Willows Hotel. “A PIT BULL OF A MAN ” money, in keeping with people’s needs.” ir Harry Oakes was a self-made co- John Marquis, a chronicler of what has nundrum, his personality formed been called the “crime of the century,” partly by his early years in New writes that “Sir Harry was a complex man England, partly by the hard times he’d ex- with a number of personal demons.” perienced as a hard-pan miner, and part- On the night of July 7, 1943, those de- ly by his miraculous transformation from mons got very personal indeed. poor prospector to a figure of unimagina- ble wealth and standing. The stocky 5'6" THE NIGHT IN QUESTION Oakes–once described as a “pit bull of a A violent tropical storm struck the Baha- man”–was gruff and often unpleasant. He mas, drenching Nassau in thick sheets of didn’t suffer fools or flatterers, nor did he believe in mincing words. And while he made many friends through his charitable While Eunice and works, he was just as much of a genius at making enemies. the children traveled rain. It was while this tempest was raging His son-in-law, Count Alfred “Freddie” ahead to Maine to that a person or persons brutally slew Sir de Marigny, referred to Sir Harry as “eccen- Harry Oakes. tric and complicated…crude and ill-tem- enjoy the cool breezes While Eunice and the children trav- pered,” adding, “Oakes would never look eled ahead to Maine to enjoy the cool like anyone’s idea of a multimillionaire. He at “The Willows,” their breezes at “The Willows,” their summer looked like a union boss or a butcher…He summer mansion in Bar mansion in Bar Harbor, Sir Harry was bought a title from the British Crown, but still wrapping up some business in the he did not find nobility.” Harbor, Sir Harry was Bahamas, rattling around alone in the Kaitlin McKay, manager of Kirkland still wrapping up some vast emptiness of Westbourne, except for Lake’s Museum of Northern History, the servants and a longtime island friend, which is located in Sir Harry’s chateau in business in the Bahamas, Harold Christie.