Janet Smith case

Meanwhile, Wong was put on trial for murder. In October, the case was thrown out of court due to lack of evidence. Wong went back to work for the Bakers. In 1926, he left the country for Hong Kong or China.

Interest gradually died down, until on 20 March 1925, Wong was kidnapped by a group of men dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes. They proceeded to torture their captive for six weeks, trying to elicit a confession, but Wong refused to cooperate. On 1 May, he was released.

The Janet Smith case concerns the murder of 22-year-old nursemaid Janet Kennedy Smith in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on 26 July 1924, and the ensuing suspicions of a coverup.

The Bakers were among the social elite of Vancouver. They lived on the fashionable West Side, then moved in May 1924 into the house of Frederick's brother, Richard Plunkett Baker, at 3851 Osler in the exclusive Shaughnessy Heights neighborhood.

On 26 July 1924, Point Grey Police Constable James Green was called to the house. Wong claimed he heard what sounded like a car backfire; in the basement he found Smith's body. There was a bullet wound through her temple and a .45 caliber revolver near her right hand.

Odlum was an "exclusionist"; he believed that Asians could not assimilate with whites and had run on an anti-Asian platform in the 1921 federal election. On 8 August, he published an editorial called "Should Chinese Work with White Girls? He called for legislation to "preserve white girls of impressionable youth from the unnecessary wiles and villainies of low caste yellow men."

Undertakers were summoned, and instructed by both the coroner and the police to embalm the body, likely eradicating any clues that it might have yielded, for instance whether Smith had been sexually assaulted. It was the first time the undertaker had embalmed the victim of a violent death without a postmortem. He found unexplained burns on Smith's right side. Smith was buried at Mountain View Cemetery in the 1919 section bordered by 41st Avenue and Prince Edward Street.

The Chinese houseboy, married (arrived in Canada in 1913 leaving family in Hong Kong) 25- or 27-year-old Wong Foon Sing, became infatuated with Smith, giving her presents such as a silk nightdress. Her friends would later testify that she feared him.

Popular Member of the Legislative Assembly Mary Ellen Smith introduced the "Janet Smith Bill" in November. It would have prohibited the employing of Orientals and white women in the same household. The Vancouver Province pointed out that it violated the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1911 (which prohibited discriminatory legislation against Japanese) and that the British Columbia legislature did not have the authority to pass it. It failed after a second reading.

Janet Smith was born in Perth, Scotland, on 25 June 1902 to railway fireman Arthur Mitchell Tooner Smith and Joanna Benzies. The family moved to London when she was aged 11. In January 1923, Smith obtained a position taking care of the newborn daughter of Frederick and Doreen Baker. Frederick Baker ran an import-export business. When the family moved, first to Paris in April, then in October back to Vancouver, Smith accompanied them.