François Moret told the court, “Jean tried to kill me with a whirring electric machine.”
1. Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast covers the origin of Dead Man’s Flats in Bow Valley, Alberta, through the 1904 killing of Jean Moret.
2. Ben and Nicole host the episode, with Ben leading the narration and Nicole reacting to the case details and history.
3. The episode asks how a quiet stretch of land along the Bow River came to carry a violent name for more than a century.
4. The story begins in rural France, where the Marat family lived in the Auvergne region as cattle farmers.
5. Pierre and Anne Marat had six children, but only Jean, Louis, François, and Eugenie survived into adulthood.
6. Jean and Louis moved to Canada in 1898, settling in the Bow Valley area after leaving France behind.
7. Jean first worked as a night guard at the dynamite storage area before starting a small dairy farm on the Bow River Flats.
8. Louis later worked in the coal mines near Canmore and eventually left for the Klondike Gold Rush.
9. François arrived in Bow Valley by 1902 and worked on Jean’s farm before drifting into odd jobs and mine work.
10. François began hearing voices he said belonged to his dead parents, and he became convinced Jean was plotting to kill him.
11. He also claimed Jean hid a whirring electrical machine in the forest and that he could hear it even when he could not see it.
12. The episode notes that doctors later viewed his voices and hallucinations as signs of a severe mental disorder.
13. On May 10, 1904, François borrowed an axe from Ella May Lauder, which later became the murder weapon.
14. In the early morning of May 11, 1904, François attacked Jean in bed while Jean was sleeping.
15. The narration states that Jean was 32 years old and that François later threw the body into the Bow River.
16. François then went to Canmore and reportedly told people his brother would not be coming to town that day.
17. The Northwest Mounted Police arrested François at the Okaloosa Hotel in Canmore and sent him to Calgary for trial.
18. A jury found him guilty, but the court ruled him not guilty by reason of insanity and committed him to Brandon Asylum in Manitoba.
19. The episode’s tone is conversational and reflective, with the hosts mixing case narration with side comments about the landscape and the courtroom testimony.
20. Listeners who like Canadian true crime, local history, and place-based stories will get the most from it; listeners wanting fast-paced procedural detail may skip it.
