The Murder of Francis Rattenbury: The Man Who Built B.C.

Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Curiouscast

True Crime, Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2026

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 423: Francis Mawson Rattenbury designed the BC Parliament Buildings, the Empress Hotel, and the building that now houses the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as many others. He was the most celebrated architect in the province for thirty years. In 1935, he was beaten to death in his armchair in a rented house in Bournemouth, England, by his wife Alma’s teenage lover, a chauffeur named George Percy Stoner. Both Alma Rattenbury and Stoner confessed. The trial at the Old Bailey gripped the English-speaking world. What happened after the trial was even more shocking than the murder. Sources:Sean O'Connor, The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury (Simon & Schuster, 2019)Anthony A. Barrett & Rhodri Windsor Liscombe, Francis Rattenbury and British Columbia: Architecture and Challenge in the Imperial Age (UBC Press, 1983)Terry Reksten, Rattenbury (Sono Nis Press, 1978; revised 1998)Francis Mawson Rattenbury — Dictionary of Canadian BiographyFrancis Rattenbury — Biographical Dictionary of Architects in CanadaFrancis Rattenbury — WikipediaAlma Rattenbury — WikipediaNewspapers.com | Search: Francis Rattenbury Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:12.6	Welcome back to Dark Poutine.
1:14.7	I'm Mike Brown.
1:19.4	And I'm Matthew Stockton's complaining about how loud it is downtown right now.
1:23.5	They're building a high rise behind my building and another one beside my building.
1:28.2	And they're fixing up roads for FIFA, which is hitting here this summer.
1:28.8	Yeah.
1:34.8	And trying to make everything pretty. It's so funny that, you know, they leave like the ratty sidewalks for us taxpayers who have to use them every day. But now when FIFA's coming in,
1:41.3	they finally decide to fix them. So, hey, at least it's, at least it's getting my neighborhood fixed up a little bit.
1:48.6	I have a bit of a weird connection to somebody who's playing in the World Cup for Canada,
1:53.3	which is kind of cool.
1:54.7	My buddy Peter, who grew up next door to me, his grandparents were next right next door,
	...

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