Alick Pennycuick
	
Alick Pennycuick was a constable with the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) posted at Fort Selkirk in December 1899. The post had two constables.((Gord Allison, “The Christmas Day Murders – Part 3 (The Investigation).” 29 March 2019. //Welcome to Yukon History Trails,// 2019 website: https://yukonhistorytrails.com/2019/03/29/the-christmas-day-murders-part-3-the-investigation/)) Pennycuick was investigating a series of thefts from caches along the Yukon River trail. A sudden onset of winter meant scows carrying supplies for Dawson were frozen in place. Goods were removed from the scows and stored in caches so that horse teams could move them later in the winter. In December, there were a number of thefts reported and Pennycuick suspected two men who gave their names as Miller and Ross. These men were George O’Brien and Thomas Graves and they were planning a robbery and murder of travellers along the River Trail.((Gord Allison, “The Christmas Day Murders – Part 3 (The Investigation).” 29 March 2019. //Welcome to Yukon History Trails,// 2019 website: https://yukonhistorytrails.com/2019/03/29/the-christmas-day-murders-part-3-the-investigation/))
	
Lawrence Olsen was a lineman for the Yukon Telegraph, and he passed through the Hoochiku NWMP post on the day before Christmas. Corporal Ryan invited him for Christmas dinner but Olsen never arrived. Two days after Christmas, a NWMP officer from Five Finger Rapids came to Ryan’s post saying they had not heard from Olsen, so Ryan and his special constable set out on the trail north. They found O’Brien and Grave’s camp but no sign of Olsen. At Fussell’s roadhouse they learned that Olsen had headed south with Frederick Clayson and Linn Relfe on Christmas day. Ryan went back to O’Brien’s camp and found articles stolen from the McKay Brother’s cache. He contacted Constable Pennycuik at Fort Selkirk and told him the story. Pennycuick wired the NWMP headquarters in Dawson and sent out a notice for all posts to watch for the thieves. On 5 January, Frederick Clayson was overdue at Skagway and Pennycuick connected Olsen and Clayson as travelling together and both missing.((Gord Allison, “The Christmas Day Murders – Part 3 (The Investigation).” 29 March 2019. //Welcome to Yukon History Trails,// 2019 website: https://yukonhistorytrails.com/2019/03/29/the-christmas-day-murders-part-3-the-investigation/))

Constable Thomas Dickson arrested O’Brien in Tagish village. The Dickson family legend has officer Dickson saying “hands up or your lights out.” O’Brien was held at the Tagish post for a month and a half before being taken to Fort Selkirk to face the charges of theft. Meanwhile, NWMP Inspector William Scarth was put in charge of the investigation of three missing men: Olsen, Clayson, and Relfe. Scarth established his headquarters at Fort Selkirk and put constables Pennycuick and Ryan on the case.((Gord Allison, “The Christmas Day Murders – Part 3 (The Investigation).” 29 March 2019. //Welcome to Yukon History Trails,// 2019 website: https://yukonhistorytrails.com/2019/03/29/the-christmas-day-murders-part-3-the-investigation/)) 

In February 1900, Phillip Ralph McGuire, a private detective working for the Clayson family, arrived at the Tagish NWMP post and questioned O’Brien. Soon after, a reward was posted for information about the whereabouts of Frederick Clayson. McGuire travelled north and he and corporal Ryan examined O’Brien’s camp and found that he had been burning clothes. The understaffed NWMP hired McGuire to help with the investigation. He and his dogs snooped about and found the site of the murders. On March 23rd, McGuire and Pennycuick began a six-week search of the murder and tent sites and 400 pieces of evidence was located. On May 30th, Pennycuick recovered a body on a river bar a mile and a half south of Fort Selkirk and it was identified as Frederick Clayson, dead of gunshot wounds. On June 8th, another body was located eleven miles south of Fort Selkirk and was identified as Linn Relfe, also dead by gunshot wounds. The third body, Lawrence Olsen, was found more than thirty miles below Fort Selkirk on June 26th.((Gord Allison, “The Christmas Day Murders – Part 3 (The Investigation).” 29 March 2019. //Welcome to Yukon History Trails,// 2019 website: https://yukonhistorytrails.com/2019/03/29/the-christmas-day-murders-part-3-the-investigation/)) 

George O’Brien was convicted of the murders and hanged in Dawson on 23 August 1901.((Bill Miller, //Wires in the Wilderness: The Story of the Yukon Telegraph.// Surrey BC: Heritage House. 2004: 53-54; M. J. Malcolm, //Murder in the Yukon: The case against George O’Brien.// Douglas & McIntyre, 1982.))