Shocking headlines of both The Yorkton Enterprise of Oct. 6, 1922 and the Bismarck North Dakota Tribune, of Oct.9, 1922.
If one looks at the headlines of the article in The Yorkton Enterprise shown here, one sees that the murder of Paul Matoff took place on the Canadian side of the border at a CPR station! I believe that the word “Bootlegger” does not apply here when describing Matoff, because there had been a sale between some American customers and Paul Matoff on behalf of the Bronfman Bienfait warehouse. These warehouses along the international border on the Saskatchewan side were “bonded” by the Provincial government. So, it was not an illegal transaction to send cash received from over the warehouse counter sales via the mail or Express. We are told that Matoff was just closing off his books for the night and sending money to their headquarters in Regina. Then, if we look at the Bismarck North Dakota story, the Matoff murder suspect is an American by the name of Lee Dillage of Lignite, North Dakota. The authorities were attending to his extradition to Canada to attend a court. Sure, the American police found big “caches” of liquor on his land, but in the end Dillage was not convicted for the Matoff murder.
This is a very big cold case!
One interesting part of this story is the description of the liquor “cache” on the Dillage farm. It is one of the rare descriptions of hiding places for booze. It is described this way: “The Dillage cache was in the barnyard, in an excavation with earth spread over a trap door. The underground cellar was six feet wide, 10 feet long, and 5 feet high. At another bootlegger’s farm in North Dakota, the hiding place was similar to Dillage’s place except that a sidewalk leading to an out building covered the cellar entrance through a narrow passage several feet long.”
Contact Terri Lefebvre Prince,
Heritage Researcher,
City of Yorkton Archives,
Box 400, 37 Third Avenue North
Yorkton, Sask. S3N 2W3
306-786-1722
heritage@yorkton.ca
