The New Brunswick Outlaw Benny Swim
The Lovesick Boy Who Went to the Hangman Twice
He didn’t look like a killer. He looked like a stray mutt, soaked to the bone, shivering in the cold light of morning. Standing there on the gallows, Benny Swim, born out of the rough-boned badlands east of the St. John River north of Woodstock, looked smaller than the hate that had carried him here. His hands hung limp, his breath shallow. There wasn’t much left now but skin, stubbornness, and a worn-out spirit too foolish to give up.
A Love Twisted by Fire and Steel
Olive Swim, John’s daughter. A wild thing in gingham, with legs white as snow and hair black as nightfall. A mouth that promised too much and eyes that warned you better walk away. Benny didn’t walk. He burned for her the way a dry field burns under a cruel sun.
*Quote from The Outlaw Reverend song "Benny":*
"Benny, what have you done, with a handful of bullets that don't even all fit your gun."
Trading a Fiddle for a Gun
He sold everything he had left — a coat, a vest, and that fiddle — traded down for a broken-spring revolver and a pocketful of bullets he had to whittle down by hand just to fit the chamber.
On March 27, 1922, Benny waited in the growing dark. Harvey Trenholm — the war hero who thought the battlefields were behind him — never saw the bullet coming.
Olive staggered into the doorway, blood blooming through her dress like a terrible flower. Benny didn't hesitate. He fired again. The faulty gun coughed a bullet through her chest. She collapsed against the kitchen floorboards they might have danced on, once, when the world was still young and foolish.
*Quote from The Outlaw Reverend song "Benny":*
"Leaving, a trail of blood upon the ground, and if you're really lookin' for me, the trail's end is where I'm found."
The Fall of Benny Swim
Captured. Shackled. Raving in his cell. Even the gaolers didn't want the job. They had to drag men from Quebec to tie the noose. Even then they botched it.
October 6. The trapdoor fell. Benny swung. But life refused to leave him clean. His lungs still fought. His heart still thumped. His body had to be dragged up the gallows a second time. A second hanging to finish what the first couldn't.
*Quote from The Outlaw Reverend song "Benny":*
"Suppose I will hang for this. I'm gonna hang for this."
The Last Grave in Coldstream
They buried him without ceremony, in a shallow grave in Coldstream. No mourners. No music. Just a rough patch of ground where the earth itself seemed ashamed to keep his bones.
And maybe, if you listen close enough, you’ll hear it — a fiddle crying somewhere deep in the trees — mourning all the ones who loved too hard, fought too dumb, and died too slow.
