Doris McDonald
Toronto Daily Star, March 7 1928
I looked Doris McDonald up in a resource that I have used before: a list of everyone who was sentenced to death in Canada before capital punishment was abolished for common crimes in 1976. Sure enough, I found her: she and her husband were convicted of killing Adélard Bouchard on July 17 1927. They had hired him to drive them from the United States to Canada and then robbed him and killed him.
Ms. McDonald, who was an American and also apparently used the names of Julia Palmer, Mrs. Harry J. Carter, and Mrs. George C. Vance, did have her death sentence commuted, which happened only three days before her execution date. The jury in the murder trial of the couple recommended mercy for her and she was sentenced to life imprisonment at the St-Vincent-De-Paul penitentiary. Mercy was not recommended for her husband, George McDonald, and he was executed on March 23 1928.
A search turned up this article from a 1932 Sarasota newspaper that claimed that George McDonald had confessed that his wife had nothing to do with the killing, and that this confession had led to her sentence being commuted. The article also claimed that there was a third party involved in the crime, a man named Ralph McMullen. Petitions were apparently being circulated for Ms. McDonald's parole at that time; I don't know whether they were successful.
I also found a blog post from 2009 about the case and a photograph of the couple.
Created October 16, 2025.