Murder at monastery stranger than fiction

It is definitely a perk of my job to work in a place where the entire history of Yorkton is neatly packed away in volumes of newspapers dating to the late 19th Century.

While researching my story on the planned demolition of the St. Mary's monastery last week, Father Peter Pidskalny tipped me off to a 78-year-old murder case. A quick trip to the "morgue" revealed a story that proves the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.

On March 20, 1935, Stefan Ilasz, a well-liked blacksmith in the Town of Goodeve marched into the town office and filed a 50-page letter with the secretary, William Burak, with instructions to keep it in the safe until further notice.

The next morning, Ilasz appeared at the door of the monastery asking for Father John Bala, superior of the Ruthenian Catholic Mission. Brother Nicefor, the monk who had answered the door, summoned Bala, who immediately went to greet the blacksmith, who he knew from the time he was stationed at Ituna.

After a brief discussion, Ilasz produced a .38 revolver. Bala would later testify that the Goodeve man appeared to pull the trigger, but the gun didn't fire. The priest fled. Ilasz followed and squeezed the trigger again. This time the gun discharged, striking Bala in the arm. He fell to the floor kicking his legs to fend off his attacker. Ilasz fired again. That bullet also found Bala's arm.

By this point, Father A. N. Delforge had heard the commotion and arrived on the scene. As Delforge grappled with the gunman, a third shot struck Bala just under the rib cage.

The struggle continued with Delforge lifting Ilasz off his feet into a window. The blacksmith's fourth shot entered Delforge's head from above killing him instantly. Ilasz fled.

A short time later, tipped off by witnesses, Yorkton Chief of Police Herb Fenson accompanied by Detective Robert Walker and Constables Blackwell and Hatch cornered the suspect in the yard of the Wilcox Dairy.

According to witnesses, Ilasz fired at the policemen before turning the gun on himself. As he lay dying, he said, "I killed Bala because he killed my son in 1930," according to Chief Fenson.

Police found two letters written in Ukrainian on the body, one addressed to the RCMP, the other to Father Kusey, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest in Ituna.

The Kusey letter confirmed Ilasz blamed Bala for his son's death. The RCMP letter alerted police to the existence of the document being held by the Goodeve secretary-treasurer.

Early reports in The Enterprise hinted at the connection between ILasz's actions and the death of his son, but it wasn't until the coroner's inquiries into the deaths of Delforge and the blacksmith were completed that the man's seething hatred for not just Father Bala, but the Ukrainian Catholic Church (UCC) in general, was revealed.

The "letter" was part confession and part Last Will and Testament, but it reads like a strange manifesto against the UCC. In fact, it was so bizarre and there was so much public interest surrounding its existence that The Enterprise published it in its entirety in the April 11 edition of the paper (yes, the justice system moved very quickly in those days).

"This was to happen," the document begins. "I was to pay back death for death on December 4, 1930 at about 9:15 in the morning. You cultured, civilized and Christian people, know ye that the Catholic Redemptorist priests are carrying on a secret war."

He goes on to explain that Peter, his 12-year-old son, had taken ill with diphtheria on November 30, 1930. On December 3, Ilasz heard that Bala was attending a funeral nearby and summoned the priest to hear Peter's confession fearing his son might die.

The priest came to the Ilasz household and heard the boy's confession, but would not give him communion. Ilasz wrote that his son told him that Bala had questioned him about the family attending the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and when he said they had, the priest told him he was being punished by God and would die.

At this point, I was thinking Ilasz had concluded the priest had caused Peter to die by not absolving him through confession and communion, but no, it gets better.

Ilasz goes on to describe how Bala returned to the house that evening and stroked the boy's face. Afterward, Peter said he felt better and just wanted to sleep. He did not wake up.

The blacksmith became convinced Bala had actively murdered the boy perhaps with some kind of poison on his hands. He talked about briefly considering calling the police and doctor in Melville.

"As I am walking to the telephone different thoughts passed through my head and on the way I got an idea that I should do different and there I swore before God Almighty that I myself would square up with that priest Bala," he wrote. "I will kill him and cut him into pieces, make his death, take his life for my son Peter's death. When he is dead, that Bala, I will cut him because if I called the police and doctor they would cut my Peter up trying to find out the cause of his death."

The diatribe goes on and on, during which he describes several previous failed plots to kill the priest and accuses Bala of also murdering an old couple named Kokolowich for being readers of the Ukrainian Voice, an Orthodox newspaper.

At other points he digresses to give instructions on the disposition of his estate including odd donations of $7.50 to each of a number of churches, synagogues and a Buddhist temple, but not including the UCC.

"Let all living people think over why I have not left anything to the Catholic Church," he wrote. Similar delusions of grandeur are peppered throughout the manifesto including his ending.

"Now that the living people think it over and let them do something and let those Catholic priests think up what they like. Let them not stay quiet. Let them shout and shout out loud that it is not the truth. My good people I am ending my life and I am sacrificing my life because it is true, as true as God is in the heavens and on earth [sic], every word is true."

True, and stranger than fiction.