Some people would go to great lengths in order to please their parents. But sometimes, mother doesn’t always know best.
On November 27th, 2001, Elizabeth Gatenby and her mother, Margaret Benesch were returning to the home Margaret shared with her common-law husband, 72-year-old Bruce Firman in St. Catherines, Ontario.
Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. And then Elizabeth looked in the garage. There lay Bruce, in a pool of blood. Keeping her mother from seeing the scene, she instructed her to call the police.
Detective Keri Harrison took the call. She was the first female investigator in the Niagara Regional Police homicide unit. This was her first time leading an investigation. She wasn’t about to leave anything undiscovered.
Bruce was a retired real estate agent, and described as a quiet man. His cause of death was found to be blunt-force trauma to the head. He’d been beaten with a pipe wrench.
Right as investigators were beginning their case, they discovered that Margaret and Bruce were having a hard time. They were going through quite a nasty separation. Margaret was taking Bruce through the courts in order to get what she felt was owed to her. She refused to leave the house, and she wasn’t letting him off easy. Elizabeth was there to support her mother. She’d taken a three day Greyhound bus journey from where she was living in British Columbia to ensure her mother was cared for.
The night Bruce had been killed, he’d just been sticking to his routine – he went for a bike ride, and intended to return home and watch the news. Some neighbours told police that they could practically set a watch to Bruce’s routine. It was as he was returning from his bike ride that he’d been attacked in his own garage.
The house showed no signs of robbery, or of a struggle. Investigators figured Bruce had been specifically targeted. It also seemed that his attackers had been waiting for him from inside his garage – they’d been let in, or had found a way in.
Investigators discovered that Bruce had wanted to leave Margaret – he’d met someone new and wanted to end things with Margaret before moving forward. Margaret wasn’t making it easy. Bruce wanted out of the relationship, but Margaret wanted everything. Most damning, Bruce had told his son, who told investigators, that if anything were to happen to him, they needed to look into Margaret. Bruce’s son portrayed Margaret as a very cruel woman.
Margaret told a slightly different story. She described Bruce as a swindler – taking everything from Margaret and then turning cold towards her when she had nothing left to give. Margaret wasn’t about to let him take from her anymore.
In reality, court documents from the separation showed that Bruce only wanted to take back a few items that belonged to him, while Margaret was refusing to back down.
The night of Bruce’s death, he’d complained about all of this to his new girlfriend, Joan. Bruce was returning from her home when he was attacked. She explained to investigators that Bruce was afraid of Margaret, and of what she might do to him. He was afraid that, at any moment, she would change the locks to the house and not allow him in to retrieve his belongings.
The separation was turning into a true he-said-she-said situation.
Margaret was beginning to look like a real good suspect. Except for one little snag. Margaret, and her daughter Elizabeth, had an alibi for the night of the murder. They were having dinner at a restaurant in Niagara Falls. The women were quite memorable – Elizabeth, particularly, required a lot of attention. And then taking the drive from Niagara Falls to St. Catherines into consideration, there was no way the women had been anywhere near the home when Bruce was murdered.
However, it was Elizabeth herself who provided investigators with their first huge lead. She told them about a young man she talked to during the long bus ride – a young cowboy by the name of Dell. Surveillance footage from the bus terminal showed the pair getting off the bus, and then walking to a rental car.
Elizabeth admitted to giving him a ride to a hotel, and paying for a room. When investigators went to the hotel where Dell was staying, they were told he’d been staying there with another young man, but they’d already checked out. Police went through some of the things the two men left behind, hoping for prints that would lead to identification. In quite a jarring moment, investigators found food containers that looked exactly like the ones they’d seen in Bruce’s kitchen.
Fingerprint analysis from the car Elizabeth had rented had come back to a young man named Tommy Nicol from Kimberley, British Columbia – which was quite close to where Elizabeth herself lived.
As he was apprehended, he denied being in St. Catherines the night of the murder. When faced with his prints in the car, he confessed everything.
Dell was actually Byron Gatenby, Elizabeth’s son. She’d contracted both of them to kill Bruce. She wanted him out of the picture in order to help her mother.
Byron was arrested on his way back to his home in Whistler, British Columbia. Jack Lich, his mother’s partner, had contacted him and urged him to turn himself into police. He did so willingly.
It didn’t take long for the plot to unravel. Investigators discovered that not only did Elizabeth pay for the hotel room for the boys, she had also paid for their bus tickets from BC to St. Catherines. Elizabeth had completely orchestrated the murder of Bruce Firman. Police had enough to charge Elizabeth Gatenby for first degree murder. But they needed Byron to turn on her, first.
He was reluctant, in the beginning, protecting his mother. She didn’t want her to get in trouble. However, faced with the severity of his actions, Bryon soon turned on his mother, confessing that she’d paid him and Tommy $400 in order to kill Bruce. Elizabeth had convinced her 18-year-old son and his friend to commit murder.
Figuring they wouldn’t get caught, Elizabeth planned an evening out with her mother, and then contacted Byron and told him to stand by in the garage and get ready. Once in the garage, they waited for Bruce to return, and then attacked him. They beat him in the head with a pipe wrench.
Deed done, the boys fled and the women returned to the home. Elizabeth had planned it all.
After her arrest, Elizabeth stopped talking to investigators, never saying another word to them. She never confesses to her role in the plot, nor does she ever take any form of responsibility for her actions, or show any form of remorse.
On May 17th, 2006, Elizabeth Gatenby was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole for 25 years. Her son testified against her at her trial.
According to the CBC documentary series The Detectives, “Byron Gatenby was charged as an adult. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder and received a sentence of six years. Tommy Nicol pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced as a young offender and received six years in jail.”
Mother truly doesn’t always know best.
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Sources:
Teen arrested in Whistler in connection with Ontario murder – Claire Ogilvie – Pique News Magazine
CBC Documentary series – The Detectives – Season 2 Episode 8: Master Manipulator