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History and the Art of Creative Writing
Published ARTiculate Magazine, Fall 2004 / Winter 2005
A man was murdered in Coleman along the eastern Crowsnest Pass in 1922. Witnesses say another man and woman, armed for confrontation, drove their “Whiskey Six” sedan to his dwelling. An argument flared and the men grappled. Two gunshots resounded. As the doomed man turned homeward, fresh shots felled him. Although Constable Stephen Lawson’s nine-year-old daughter, Pearl, never saw who fired the fatal bullet, she maintains that 22-year-old immigrant, Filumena “Florence” Lassandro, was a killer. On May 23, 1923, Lassandro and Emilio “Emperor Pic” Picariello, the popular bootlegger who smuggled liquor from Fernie, were hanged on the gallows, making Lassandro the last female convict sentenced to death in Canada.
