“From an authoritative source, the Times learns that no new developments are expected before next week, probably not before the inquest, which will be resumed on Wednesday night it is expected that Florence Kinrade and her mother will have sufficiently recovered to permit them to go on the witness stand to tell their story.”
Hamilton Times. March 05, 1909
A Mrs. C.N. Shafer was said to have heard three shots fired when she was passing the KInrade house shortly after 3 o’clock . The lady later claimed not to have said that, although many believed that her friends were trying to cover up the fact that she did.
“Driving twenty miles or more over drifted roads and snow-banked fields with a howling western wind blowing clouds of snow in one’s face and thermometer below zero, stopping at every other house to run down murder clues is no holiday trip. A Times reporter and a Toronto newspaper correspondent started out yesterday afternoon and scoured the country around Mount Hope thoroughly in hope of getting something definite to show that Mrs. Shafer really heard the shots fired and particularly to discover if possible how she fixed the time.
“Not since the sensational Baron murder mystery, when an unknown woman was found murdered in the fall of 1905 in a hickory grove back of Marshall’s lime kilns, off the James street road, has there been a crime in which that section of the country has been so greatly interested. The excitement is fully as intense as in Hamilton. The farmers read the papers every night, theorize and gossip about the probabilities of developments, and are as anxious to hear the views of everyone that comes along. Many of them have formed set opinions from what they have read from the newspapers, and nearly all of them wind up with the declaration, ‘It’s another Barton murder mystery. They will never get at the bottom of it.’
Hamilton Times March 5 1909
At Glanford station, reporters discovered that Mrs. Shafer, along with her husband and her father had recently moved out of the area, relocating to Eden Centre, a small place near Buffalo, New York. The move had long been planned.
Discussing the KInrade case with residents, one who had talked with Mrs. Shafer before she left was told that she had had said that she heard shots while passing the KInrade house in a street car.
“ ‘It can’t be so,’ said one farmer, who seems to know something about city life. ‘There must be some mistake. Imagine anyone hearing three shots while riding on a Hamilton street car.’
A friend of Mrs. Shafer’s confirmed that she had in Hamilton on the day in question. When passing the Kinrade house, she noticed all the police presence. It was eventually decided that Mrs. Shafer’s father, Mr. Armstrong who was heard of hearing, had heard some of his daughter’s and did not hear it well, and when he went to the Glanford village grocery store, got the details incorrect when talking about what his daughter had seen.
The Toronto News printed a dispatch it had received from Norfolk Virginia :
“That Miss Florence Kinrade never had an engagement to sing in any church in this city has been established after careful investigation by the News’ correspondent. Nor has she ever sung in the Manchester Presbyterian Church.
“A Toronto Exchange this morning says :’Miss Florence Kinrade and her mother passed a quiet, restful night Wednesday night, and both felt considerably improved in health yesterday. The flutter of excitement caused by the family’s appearance in town is dying down, and the family are commencing to enjoy the peace and change for which they left Hamilton.”
Hamilton Times March 5, 1909
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