Molly Justice

Anneta Margaret Clive Justice, known to everyone as Molly, was a 15-year-old girl described as mature for her age and a "finer girl you couldn’t meet anywhere." Despite her youth, she was the head seamstress at the General Warehouse Ltd. garment factory in Victoria, British Columbia. She was a beloved friend, and for decades after her death, the grandmother of her best friend would place a memorial notice in the local newspaper every January, promising to do so for as long as she lived. Molly's life was cut short in an act of brutal violence that has haunted the community of Saanich for more than 80 years.

On the evening of January 18, 1943, Molly finished her workday and caught the 5:50 p.m. bus to go home. It was wartime, and strict "dim-out" regulations meant the streets were unlit to guard against potential enemy attack. After getting off the bus near Swan Lake, Molly decided to take a familiar shortcut along the Canadian National railway line, a route that passed by her house on Brett Avenue and is now part of the Galloping Goose Trail. Sometime after she disappeared into the darkness, she was attacked. A few hours later, a couple returning from skating on the lake discovered blood-stained parcels in the snow and alerted the Saanich Police. Officers found Molly’s body lying face down beside the tracks. She had been struck on the head with a heavy object and stabbed more than 20 times. The cause of death was determined to be blood loss from wounds to her throat. Her purse, which contained $4, and her ring were missing, but there was no evidence of sexual assault.

The investigation, which involved Saanich, Victoria, and Provincial Police, was immediately hampered by a heavy snowfall that covered potential clues. The public was outraged, with many blaming the dim-out conditions for creating a dangerous environment. Police eventually found Molly’s purse and a cigarette lighter under a bucket near the lake, along with a pair of bloodstained men's gloves. An exhaustive effort to trace the 96 pairs of gloves sold locally involved over 1,700 interviews. The Saanich Municipality offered a $250 reward for information, which was later doubled, but no useful leads emerged.

The case took a strange turn in May 1943, four months after the murder. A 15-year-old boy named Frank Hulbert was arrested for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl near Swan Lake, whom he had threatened with "the same as Molly Justice got." Instead of becoming the prime suspect in Molly's murder, Hulbert convinced investigators he had information about the killer. He pointed the finger at William Mitchell, a 49-year-old former RCMP officer who was his co-worker. Based on Hulbert's claim that Mitchell had confessed to him, police arrested Mitchell and charged him with first-degree murder. At his trial five months later, Mitchell was acquitted after another co-worker provided a solid alibi, and Mitchell himself testified that blood found on his knife was his own. The jury believed him over Hulbert, saving Mitchell from a potential death sentence.

For more than two decades, the case went cold. Frank Hulbert, however, reportedly admitted to the killing on several occasions over the years. In 1967, Saanich police successfully had Hulbert charged with perjury for lying about Mitchell's involvement in the murder. After two trials, he was convicted and sentenced to four and a half years in prison, but the Crown never approved a murder charge against him. Hulbert died in Port Alberni in 1996, and police subsequently announced their public belief that he had been Molly's killer all along.

The case is widely considered one of the most seriously botched police investigations of its time. Following Hulbert's death, rumors intensified that he had been protected from a murder charge because he was related to Eric Pepler, the province's deputy attorney general from 1934 to 1954. In response, the Attorney General appointed a former judge, Martin Taylor, to investigate the allegations of a cover-up. Taylor's 1996 report found no evidence that Pepler was related to Hulbert or that he had interfered in the case. However, Taylor could not definitively conclude that Hulbert was guilty, writing, "we would do well to remember that those responsible for the Saanich police investigation said the same thing of William Mitchell."

Over the decades, crucial physical evidence has been lost, including hair found under Molly's fingernails and a fingerprint recovered from her purse, making a modern DNA analysis impossible. The Saanich Police Department's new headquarters was ironically built in the 1960s right next to the scene of the crime, a constant reminder of the unsolved case. As of April 2025, the murder of Molly Justice remains officially open with the Saanich Police, though it is also described as "partially solved and most likely, permanently sealed." No reward is currently being offered.