The Lynching of Peter Wheeler

In the winter of 1896, young Annie Kempton was brutally murdered. Throat slashed, face beaten, she bled to death on the floor of her family home in Bear River, Nova Scotia. An entire community and a salacious media rose and pointed their finger at one man: Peter Wheeler. According to the newspapers of the day, not only had Peter Wheeler killed Annie Kempton, he had also committed the unforgivable sin of being dark-skinned and foreign-born, a hired hand who had never learned his place. Thanks to a Halifax detective, the self-proclaimed Sherlock Holmes of the Maritimes, Wheeler was strung up in the dead of night. The case was among the first in Canada to introduce forensic science into a courtroom. In a riveting, fast-paced narrative, Komar re-examines the evidence using modern techniques and reveals how Peter Wheeler was the victim of a state-sanctioned lynching, executed for a crime he did not commit. The Lynching of Peter Wheeler is Debra Komar's second book on historic crimes. Her first, The Ballad of Jacob Peck, was met with considerable critical acclaim.