1890 newspapers in conflict with testimonies.

"The Daily Columbian" September and November 189o and January 1891.

The reliability of the press as a source of information is immediately put in question by the account of the murder in the Daily Columbian’s first report in September 1890, a version repeated in November with the conviction and again in January 1891 after the hanging of Slumach."
What is reported in the press is quite different from what is recorded at the inquisitions and the trial. If, as reported in the newspaper story, there were "several other Indians"around when Bee was murdered, they all would have been called to witness. In truth there was only one witness to the murder, a man called Seymour, from Harrison and it is on his pronouncement that Slumach was convicted. This Seymour lived in a fishing camp at Lillooet (now Allouette) Slough together with Louis Bee, their wives and an unnamed old man. On that fateful day, Bee and Seymour set out to find bait for their sturgeon line. They heard a shot and went to see who was shooting and what the shooter was hunting. Sitting in their canoe alongside the shore they encountered Slumach who was standing on the bank with a single-barrelled muzzle loader in his hand. Some words were spoken, Slumach fired, and Bee’s dead body dropped overboard into the river. Slumach went to his own canoe and started reloading his gun. Seymour fled over land, recovered his canoe later, and reported the murder to the Indian Agent Peter McTiernan at New Westminster that same night.