Anthony Nestor “Ned” Elfors (1853 – 1908)
Ned Elfors was born in Finland. He travelled north from Seattle with David Bergman and Emil Anderson in the summer of 1908. They left Whitehorse on 16 May by boat and were ten miles south of Fort Selkirk by the first week of June. One morning Elfors woke Anderson and asked him to help him carry in a dead bear he had killed. After a mile or so, Elfors asked Anderson to walk ahead, then shot him in the jaw with a .32-caliber revolver. Anderson was twenty-four and fit. He wrestled with Elfors and then ran to Fort Selkirk. Police officer Thompson found Elfor’s camp within a few days and removed his rifles before waking him.1)
Franklin Thompson single-handedly captured Elfors and was promoted to Corporal for his efforts. Thompson was in the Yukon from 1898 to 1952 and died in Dawson.2) Elfors and Anderson were transported to Dawson where Anderson had the bullet removed from his jaw. Bergman’s body was eventually found and Elfors was charged with murder. He did not speak during his trail so his jailer, Sergeant Edward Smith, told the story that Elfors had told him. Elfors eventually confessed to the murder. The penalty for murder in Canada between 1892 and 1961 was death by hanging. Commanders of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) carried out capital punishment sentences in the Yukon. There were ten executions in Dawson between 1899 and 1932, one in Whitehorse in 1916, and two at Herschel Island in 1924. Ned Elfors was executed in Dawson on 6 October 1908. His body was interred in a crude box beside the slough that ran through the Fort Herchmer barracks’ yard.3)