What Happened to Sir Harry Oakes

Guest Writer: Dean from the Family Plot Podcast

This month, Dean from the Family Plot Podcast is joining us to tell you all a great dark tale about what happened to Sir Harry Oaks. You can find Dean and his family on any major podcast provider.

Hi, I'm Dean, the Dad of the Family Plot Podcast and I get the joy of sharing a little bit of true crimey history for you in a tale that feels like it's fresh out of a Hollywood Thriller. However, one cannot tell a tale without a cast of characters, so without further ado, allow me to introduce you to the cast of characters.

Sir Harry Oakes – Born December 23^rd, 1874 in Sangerville, Maine and definitely NOT any part of a royal family. He was born to lawyer William Pitt Oakes and his wife Edith Nancy Lewis and was the third of five children. He was well educated, attending Foxcroft Academy, Bowden College and Syracuse University Medical School. In 1898, after only two years of medical training, he left college, going to Alaska at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush searching to make his fortune in gold. It was not to be, and he spent the next 15 years rushing to every gold rush he could, from California to South America to Australia. Finally he purchased a plot near Kirkland Lake in Northern Ontario Canada and that plot would eventually become the Lakeshore Mine, one of the most productive gold mines in the Western Hemisphere. Overnight, he became ultra rich.

Nancy Oakes de Marigny – Sir Harry's daughter, who was born in 1925. By the time our story takes place, she is 18 and married to Count Alfred de Marigny, a French-Mauritian Count who was almost twice her age. She is beloved by her father, but he is less happy with his son-in-law.

Count Alfred de Marigny – At the time of our tale, Alfred (who is not a Count, but uses the title because it belongs to his mother's side of the family) has been married twice, both to young girls who were heiresses and both marriages had been ended rather quickly. He is not well-liked by his father-in-law and even less well-liked by the island's governor, the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII (aka Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David). He is 33 years old. And while it does not matter for our tale, he is also a friend of Ernest Hemingway.

The Duke of Windsor – He is roughly 49 at the time of our tale and the former King of England. He abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry American divorcee (who is actually twice divorced) Wallis Simpson. He made several comments after abdication that if he were still king, Britain would not be at war with Germany and in fact he and Wallis visited Germany briefly as it prepared for war. Due to their embarrassment at a former king seeming to side with an enemy of the country, he and his bride were assigned to the position of Governor in the British Protectorate of the Bahamas in the hopes that any such comments wouldn't continue to appear in the papers.

The Duchess of Windsor – The wife of Edward, Wallis Simpson. Her love life was complicated even before she met and married Edward. She was married initially to a Navy man and after that divorce she met and married a member of the Coldstream Guards named Simpson. When she met Edward, she divorced her current husband to marry him. However, in her past there was an even more damning character. The story goes she met Joachim Von Ribbentrop, one of the chief German diplomats. They had something of a relationship and it is known that Von Ribbentrop would regularly send her 17 roses, (supposedly one for each time they had sex) and it was even reported that for a time she slept with his picture on her nightstand. She is much more vocal about her dislike of the Bahamas than her husband, often referring to it as 'a hot little hell'. At the time of our tale, she is 47.

Sir Harold George Christie – 47 at the time of our tale, Sir Harold Christie is a prominent businessman, politician and real estate developer. He is also a good friend of Harold Oakes. He is visiting Harry the night our tale begins. He also has a connection in theory to the Bay Street Boys (at the time an unofficial group that supported the white oligarchy that ran and would continue to the Bahamas for some time.)

Captain Edward Melchen and Captain James O. Barker – Two Miami Detectives who had worked security for Edward in Miami. They would be called in to investigate the murder. They were called in because they were supposedly fingerprint experts.

And Now that you know the Characters, let's relate our tale.

Harry Oakes had become a multi-millionaire and his mine was producing enough gold to literally raise his worth by hundreds of thousands on a daily basis, however, he was living in Canada and the country wanted to tax his income at roughly 30%. Harry Oakes did not want to spend this much in taxes. He considered a move to the United States, but taxes there were similarly high. As he looked for a tax free shelter, he landed on the British Crown Colony, the Bahamas. The Bahamas would tax him at a very low rate. When he moved to the country he engaged in multiple philanthropic endeavors, even donating quite a bit to a hospital in London. This would allow him to purchase the title of Baronet. This is of course, the way he became Sir Harry Oakes. He was accompanied to the island by his daughter Nancy. Nancy was the child of Harry and his former wife Eunice. Eunice was much younger than Harry and eventually divorced him. Harry would never remarry. Nancy and Harry had mostly a good relationship but he was dismayed by her marriage to de Marigny the day after her 18^th birthday.

Harry, however, was worried about the tax situation in the Bahamas. With the island being a British Crown Colony, he was concerned that Britain would levy a tax on the citizens of the Bahamas. He began to look about for another tax haven and he began to look at moving to South America. He discussed this with his friend Harold George Christie and several other well-to-do citizens. It may have even reached the ears of the Duke of Windsor who did not want to lose such a wealthy citizen from his island nation.

On July 7^th, 1943 Harry had invited his friend Harold Christie over for dinner. The two were in the study talking and drinking as it began to rain. With the weather getting bad, Harry offered Harold a bed in one of the guest rooms. Harold accepted and both men went to bed. Sometime after midnight someone came in and stabbed Harry with a silver ice pick behind the ear and to cover that had hit him in the same spot with a small miner's pick. They then covered him in a flammable insecticide and set the body on fire. They then left. The next morning Harold discovered Harry's dead and partially burned body and reported it.

In a move that was considered starkly unusual at the time, the Governor took over the investigation himself. He tried to black out the press to keep information from getting out, but the owner of the largest Bahama newspaper was a friend of Oakes and already had a story prepared so the news broke within hours. Then the Governor decided the Nassau police did not have the skill or equipment to investigate the murder, so he called two men who had been on his security detail in Miami. These men were Captain Melchen and Captain Barker. He claimed that he brought these men in due to their expertise with fingerprinting, however, they did not bring their fingerprint kits or even their camera and the Nassau police did not have these things. The crime scene itself was chaotic. Muddy footprints on the stairs led up to Harry's room. An Oriental screen by the bed was covered in blood, fingerprints and a handprint. The Nassau police had been cut out of the investigation by the two Americans. The police interviewed Christie who said he had heard nothing in the night that had alarmed him. Then the two interviewed Alfred de Marigny, After the interview, they returned to the crime scene where they 'found' a fingerprint that matched Marigny's. Meanwhile, the two men had given multiple tours of the crime scene to curious local politicians and businessmen. Marigny was arrested and tried for the murder, however, the evidence against him did not hold up. The fingerprint was almost certainly planted and the jury caught it. They found Marigny not guilty but also ruled he was an undesirable alien and insisted that he leave the Bahamas. He and Nancy went to Cuba where they lived for a short time with Marigny's friend Ernest Hemingway.

The case remains unsolved to this day. Suspects include Harold Christie and the Duke of Windsor himself. And that, my spooky friends, is the story of the murder of Sir Harold Oakes. Hope you enjoyed it!