A man was gunned down in cold blood outside a Christmas Eve mass, in what police suspected was a botched assassination

It was Christmas Eve at Victoria’s St. Andrew’s Cathedral in 1890 when, just before midnight, the Latin carols and prayers of a Catholic midnight mass were suddenly shattered by the sound of a small explosion on the street outside.

A contingent of worshippers rushed outside to investigate, and there saw David Fee, a spreading pool of blood around his motionless form. A hole torn in his chest, the gun blast had been so close it had left him covered in powder burns.

Fee had left the church only moments before, and had been on his way to a Christmas party. It was to this party that bystanders carried his bloodied form in order to get it out of the night’s driving rain. Fee died still clad in festive costume, a child’s toy trumpet around his neck. His funeral, held only a few days later would become the most-attended in Victoria history.

It was “a crime as dark, cowardly and mysterious as ever disfigured the history of this province,” declared the Christmas Day edition of the Daily Colonist.

A Christmas Eve shooting was shocking enough, but this wasn’t a crime of passion or a robbery gone wrong. As prosecutors would soon argue, the 28-year-old Fee had unwittingly gotten himself caught up in a case of political murder.

The front steps of St. Andrew's Cathedral, pictured on December 23, 2019.

There was no doubt as to who had fired the fatal shot. The murderer, had given himself up almost immediately. Just before 2 a.m., a sleeping constable at the city’s police barracks was shaken awake by a young man of medium build with an Irish accent. “I am the man that shot a man tonight,” declared 33-year-old Lawrence Phelan to the groggy officer.

Investigators were able to recover the murder weapon within minutes. The Victoria police chief had been at church at the time of the murder and had heard the shot. The gun, wet from the rain and its right barrel still warm, was quickly found abandoned in a nearby house.

By the time dawn broke on Christmas Day, the only thing missing was a motive. By all accounts, David Fee had been a model citizen: An active volunteer, a former firefighter, a well-like socialite. “Everyone had a good word for ‘Dave Fee,’” memorialized the Daily Colonist. He was a shopkeeper in Nanaimo, but had returned to Victoria only the day before in order to be with his parents for Christmas.

Fee had no debts, no jilted lovers, no mortal enemies. And yet, he had seemingly been marked for death in a brazen killing more in keeping with a mob hit or a terrorist assassination.

According to the account that would be presented by prosecutors, an assassination was exactly what it was supposed to be. Political terrorism had visited the streets of Victoria, they said, but the killer had shot the wrong guy.

