March 12, 2025 • 50 mins
On today’s episode, the first part of a two-parter, Paul and Kate head to 1945 Hamilton, Ontario where a limbless and headless torso is found on the side of the road. After matching it with a missing persons report, a series of alarming discoveries are made.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Kate, how are you doing?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing really well. But more importantly, how is Coorra doing?
Because we haven't had a Cora update in a really
long time. What's going on with your dog?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Actually? You know, Cora's doing really well. She of course
is getting older, she's going to be turning twelve this Easter,
and you know, slowing down quite a bit. But you know,
she's actually had quite a bit of a quality of
life improvement lately. You know, I had posted maybe four
months ago on Instagram a picture of Cora down in
(01:33):
my man cave, which is in the basement, and just indicated, hey,
this is very unusual. She's really struggling to navigate stairs.
You know, I thought maybe it was an eyesight problem.
You know, I'd have to kind of guide her down
and she'd be really tentative to come down the stairs.
And it's about fifteen steps. It's not a short, short
(01:53):
thing for her at all. Yeah, and then a couple
of the people, I think about five different people talked
about this, this medication that helps with arthritis pain and
I hadn't even thought about that, and took her into
the vet. She said Cora was a good candidate. You know,
she has some muscle wasting in her legs just from age,
(02:14):
but she got she's on these shots now and it's
like a new dog in many ways. You know, she's
able to get up and down the stairs. She's still
a little tentative. I think there is some eyesight issues,
but even when she goes out for her walks, you know,
she's got a little more pep in her stuff, and
that in part maybe because it's you know, we've predominantly
(02:35):
been through the colder season out here in Colorado, and
she loves the snow. She loves the cold. But you know,
right now, things are doing good and so far, you know,
she's still cancer free, so everything is going good on
Cora front. So you know, for a ninety pounds yellow lab,
yet she's not a small lab. You know, she's a
big lab. And you know she's you know, up there
(03:00):
for the size of dog that she is. But you
know she's been well taken care of. And you know,
the quality of life I think is as improving as
a result of the you know, the social media suggestions
that I got.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I mean I end up getting great suggestions from listeners,
some not so great. Most of the time, I think
they're really helpful. Most of the time. They're really helpful
when you have experts out there, and some many of
our listeners are so smart, which is great. I love
smart listeners and they have all of this expertise. I mean,
I've had just lists of people say I'm in forensics,
(03:37):
or I work with DNA analysis, or I had one
person email me which I loved, who said, I'm an
expert in like colonial weaponry. If you guys ever want
to come out and shoot well, which I think is great, Oh,
very cool. So you know, I really I love getting
suggestions like that, and so especially something that's going to
(03:57):
improve the life of someone we care about so much.
Would you think that the bear encounter was the biggest adventure, trauma,
whatever you want to call it in Cora's life so
far at age twelve, almost, you.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Know, I would say obviously from our perspective. I mean,
she had her side tore open, she got a bite
on her tail, she got some sort of maybe a
claw that went dug into her forehead and had half surgery,
you know. Traumatic for my wife who was with her
at the time, for sure, but Cora didn't seem to care.
(04:35):
And she still tried to take off after a bear.
And when bears come in through our yard, she's barking
at him, you know. So that that said, don't think
that she's going to be scared of bears. You know,
she's still going to go after him. Yeah, which is
just it's so weird. We have so many deer, bunny, rabbits, turkeys,
you name it. Kora just ignores them. Yeah, but if
(04:57):
it's a bear, you know, she turns in to almost
a vicious dog.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Just your look. Yeah, she's like you, she's after the
big prey. That's what she's looking for.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I think is the big prey.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
That's the whole point of this.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
That's kind of a way to put it, I guess.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah. Okay, Well, I'm glad we had a coorra update,
and I'm sure we'll get a fish update at some point.
We don't have time right now, frankly, for a fish update, Paul,
because you really geek out on your aquarium. I'm assuming
everything is okay with the aquarium as of now.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
As of now, yeah, you know it's right here to
my right, I can almost touch it, and yeah we can.
We can talk fish some other time.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Okay, we have a busy day. So this is going
to be a two parter. You know, this is a
story in Canada, set in Canada. Love Love, Love Canada.
This is a story I think about a complicated family,
complicated relationship. But it starts the way I'm always interested
in these sorts of stories, starting, which is with a
(06:00):
body part found near water. So that isn't that usually
the beginning of a pretty decent true crime story, one
that we want to really dig into.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, you know, I've had multiple cases that you know,
parts of body have been on the shoreline, so it
usually means something bad has happened.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, okay, let's go ahead and set the scene.
We are in nineteen forty six Ontario, Canada, and we're
in the city of Hamilton, which is on the western
end of Lake Ontario. So for sort of a sense
of geography, because I don't know much about Canada, Okay, well,
I mean I've been to Toronto, I've been to Vancouver,
(06:42):
I've been to Montreal, and that's it for Canada. But
I loved all three of those cities.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
What about you, Yeah, you know, I've been to Vancouver,
and then I flew into Toronto and gave a presentation
to some college students there, then drove to Ottawa, okay,
you know, and ended up it was like a four
hour drive, and so it was first time I've ever
experienced sort of the Canadian countryside, you know. And I
(07:08):
always enjoy driving and just looking around, so that was
really cool. But don't have much experience at all up
in Canada.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, and I didn't either, And I actually had to
look up quite a few things, just procedural stuff that
I didn't know about. You'll care about it in a
little bit, okay, let's get back to Canada. So nineteen
forty six, Ontario. We're in Hamilton, which is about forty
miles southwest of Toronto fifty five miles northwest of Buffalo,
New York. I always forget how close parts of New
(07:36):
York and Canada are. In Hamilton, the population is at
about one hundred and eighty thousand in the mid nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh, it's a pretty big placing.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I have very little reference for Canada as far as
the size of cities, but it did seem like a
pretty good size for in the nineteen forties. So we've
talked about this so many times. It's unreal. Kids finding
terrible things because kids are kids and they like to
get into stuff and mess around. So on October sixteenth,
there's a group of kids that are hiking along a trail.
(08:07):
This is near an area called Albion Falls, and they
stumble upon a male torso. So this is probably my
nativity with this, but it's limbless and headless. I would
know this. I understood this part, but I guess I
didn't also know that the definition of the torso would
be the back, the abdomen, and the chest and the
(08:30):
pelvis And the reason that this is even a thing
is because the torso is dressed in a pair of
shorts and an undershirt, which seemed really weird, And at
first I thought shorts on a torso, But then you know,
Maren said, well pelvis is included with that traumatizing scene
for these kids.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Oh yeah, no, absolutely, you know this is a headless,
limbless body, right, so in essence, you know, of course
I want to hear how the dismemberment occurred, right, because
oftentimes the body is bisected, you know, through the abdominal area,
because all you know, the hardest part is just cutting
through the spine. But here you've got somebody. Sounds like
(09:12):
they're trying to remove the body parts that could lead
to identification, the head, the hands. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They're leaving on shorts and an undershirt. I don't know
why I found that weird and surprising, but I did.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Well, well, I think the question is is did they
actually leave those items of clothing on, or did they
redress this torso maybe for you know, moving the body
around for you know, I don't know if you want
to say, if it's just to make it a little
bit less bloody, for them. Do you have pictures?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
No, I don't know you've loved have pictures of the
HEADLESSLM mis torso, do not. I have a picture of
the area, though, which could be helpful. The police, of
course respond, I'm imagining it's cold. It's March in Canada,
so that's good news for us. But these are body
parts that are found along or near a trail. So
let me show you the scene, which is probably going
(10:09):
to be the most helpful photo that I have, So
hang on so you'll see the really helpful little black
arrow pointed to where it's found. And the police essentially
say they think that that the killer or somebody was
driving along this road and just toss the torso out.
It's not buried, it's not really hidden, it's just sort
(10:30):
of dumped.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah. So I'm looking at a picture and this appears
to be a picture where the photographer is capturing what
appears to be a dirt road that has a relatively
steep embankment going off of the far side of the
road from where the photographer is standing, and you know,
fairly significant number of trees and bushes with no leaves
(10:56):
on them, so it's obviously now fall wintertime. You know,
I think the determination of whether the torso was pushed
out of a moving vehicle or had been pulled out
is more you know how the torso was positioned, you know,
down this embankment as well as you know this car
is moving and the torso is just kind of pushed out,
(11:17):
And that's not necessarily an easy thing if you're dealing
with just a single offender who's also driving. But if
that torso has momentum forward, then of course it's going
to tumble some distance if the car has any speed,
and so there would probably be a fair amount of
abrasion showing this tumbling action. And that's where you know,
photos could be helpful. But at this point in time,
(11:41):
you know, this looks like a relatively straightforward body dump location.
It's a location in which, once the torso has put
down the embankment, if it falls far enough down this embankment,
then people passing by probably would not pay any attention,
not know that it's there.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
If they are trying to conceal the identity of this man,
then why would they just not cut off the head
and cut off the hands, Because fingerprinting would have been
a thing in forty six. Why not cut off the
hands and cut off the head and that's it. Why
go to the trouble of this total dismemberment. Would you
think at this point.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Well, you know, I think there's a couple of reasons.
You know, first, if the dismemberment is just to prevent
identification or delay identification, I've got a body, an old
cold case in which the head and the hand's been
cut off, and then the body was weighed down in
the Sacramento River delta, but it ended up bobbing. So
(12:43):
now we had a headless torso, if you will, bobbing
in the waves and was easily found. When you think
about identification, of course, people are thinking about the facial features,
you know, the fingerprints from the hands. Now does this
torso have any identifying tattoos on the upper arms, on
the legs, and is there a reason to remove those
(13:06):
limbs to prevent the tattoos from being seen or other
characteristics that might help somebody identify the body. Oftentimes, you know,
the limbs are removed in order to have a smaller
package to move around, you know. So there's also that
component of dismemberment. But that's where you start to see
(13:28):
as I mentioned earlier, now the torso itself is bisected
in the abdominal area, so now you have smaller packages
to be able to package up and distribute, you know,
across the countryside. If that's what your plans are.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Do you remember the story of the woman who either
murdered or participated in the murder of a man and
carried his torso wrapped in I think what they were
describing as like a hat strap, where you would, you know,
have a hat box and put straps around. And she
had this torso wrapped up in this package and carried
it on a train, and people thought it was so odd.
(14:06):
And that was the idea of exactly what she said,
which is it was easy to transport. And then she
did kind of this. She dumped it by our riverbank,
I think, is what it was in that case, So
that makes sense. I will say, there are some odd
identifying things about this torso. So if they were aiming
to not be able to have corroborating details between who
(14:30):
we find out the victim is versus this torso, I
don't think they did a great job. But let me
tell you a couple of things first. Okay, so they
don't find any other body parts. Okay, so it's just
this torso. And they think the torso has been here
for about ten days. And as I said, they thought
that it was tossed out of a moving car before
(14:51):
winding up in this resting spot. Now there's a little
list of interesting things. Okay. There are two superficial gunshot
wounds on the chest. No bullets, so skimming or whatever
you want to call it. They don't know what the
size are, but the medical examiner said this did not
kill him. They're superficial wounds. But somebody was shooting at
(15:11):
the sky, so no casing, no bullets. There are two
features that they are going to find helpful and I
might need your help on both. One is assist on
the torso's posterior. That's like tushi, right. I know that's
not the technical term, but if they're saying posterior, it's
the backside.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I mean it could be the buttocks, it could be
the back Okay. But yeah, obviously there's some sort of mass,
you know, cysts like mass on the back of this torso.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Also something I really know nothing about, which is a
undescended testicle. What does that mean? You see, you're smiling.
Is this really something you can use in help anything
helpful in an investigation?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Potentially, because when males are developing, the testes of course
developed internally, and then as this male develops, the testes
descend down into the scrotal sack, and you can have
boys born with undeescended testicles or one undeescended testicle as
(16:16):
it sounds like in this case. So it's a physical
feature that could potentially be useful to help identify this body.
If a loved one comes forward, a spouse, a family
member and says, hey, you know our son, my husband,
whatever is missing. What are some physical characteristics and outside
(16:38):
of size, highweight or whatever, it's like, well, also the
undeescended testes, you know, that could be something that they go, okay, well,
this is like this torso's matching up with the description
of this missing person, and it may be something that
could be used, you know, in nineteen forty six put
in the newspapers. It's a little bit personal, but you know,
if you're trying to figure out who this guy is,
(17:00):
that's a feature.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
They finally put it together who the torso is, and
he is a thirty nine year old man. His name
is John Dick and he came from Russia to Canada
about twenty years earlier, in the nineteen twenties, and he
is missing. He's been declared missing for around two weeks
ten days, which is how long the medical examiner thought
(17:24):
the torso had been there. He's a bus and streetcar
driver for the Hamilton Street Railway, which is the city's
transport agency. He was last seen March sixth, nineteen forty six,
so ten days earlier, but we don't really know where.
The reports have varied. Some say that he was as
cousin's house, where he was living at the time, even
(17:45):
though he's married. Others say that he was eating a
meal at the Windsor Hotel in Hamilton. But really the
big deal is that he is married, and the police
want to talk to his wife, whose name is Evelyn,
as soon as possible. He has just been newly married
six months earlier. So they don't know very much about
him except that he's a laborer and you know, see
(18:08):
no record, seems to be a good citizen and now
he is this torso And they don't have any other
body parts so far, and they don't have a conclusive
cause of death.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
How old did you say?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
He was thirty nine? So what did you think about
that with the dicended testicle?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, so, who reported him missing?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Sounds like his wife, So.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I would assume that she's aware that, you know, this
is one of his characteristics. And when they find this torso,
you know she comes in and reports John missing, you know,
this would be something where they'd call her up and say, hey,
can you give us some more information about, you know,
his physical state.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, and if she.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Mentioned this and they're going, okay, we might be on
the right track here that this could be John. But
in terms of you know, that physical trait, you know,
I would never rely upon something like that as the
sole means of identification. It's just a consistent feature. And
so now more needs to be done to identify this torso.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Okay, Well, it sounds like they're fairly confident. I guess
some of the clothing from the torso matches his, and
he's been missing, and Evelyn is completely freaking out his
wife and they've only been married about six months. I
will tell you that they obviously think this is murder,
and they think Evelyn had something to do with it,
because there's no one right now in his inner circle
(19:32):
that they can identify that would be problematic. Ethlen Dick
is problematic as a suspect and as a witness. And
I will also say that this is going to be
a story involves slutshaming, which I hate that phrase, but
there's no other way to describe it in this story.
And so I think that our edict is to figure
(19:54):
out the actual facts in this case, because it is
still a mystery here versus you know, what is all
the smoke and mirrors and the circumstantial stuff that happens.
They are very quickly zeroing in on Evelyn because she
has quite a reputation, and we can kind of talk
about your experience maybe with that in more modern cases too.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You mentioned that John was living with his cousin at
the time he goes missing, and not with Evelyn. M hm.
So it sounds like he's estranged in the marriage. Even
though they I mean literally been married only six months.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
They've been having a really hard time almost immediately, they
had a hard time, okay, And I can give you
some background on her and on them, and you know,
normally I would sort of take you through different suspects
and different potentials there aren't any other potentials here. It's
whether or not. This is a strong case, I think
with Evelyn, and there are a lot of people involved.
(20:54):
So he's living with a cousin right now because they
are having almost immediate problems in their marriage.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Absolutely okay. So they obviously after figuring out this torso
is John, then they interview Evelyn.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yep, they do. She is upset and frantic and confused
about what happened, and the police start digging around and
trying to figure out who she is. Because it doesn't
take long to figure out that Evelyn has had quite
a reputation. She's sort of unframed as a social light
in the nineteen forties in a socialite Paul, because she
(21:27):
has dated really powerful people in this area, in this
part of candidate, powerful men, so that that immediately puts
her on their on the police's radar because they start
thinking immediately, well, who else could be responsible? She wants
to knock this guy off for whatever reason. And I
don't know if that's fair yet, We'll have to see.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
No. And when you say powerful men, I'm assuming politically
and or financially powerful.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yep, business politics, you name it. Okay, So the facts
are right now John is dead fifteen years older, so
her husband's fifteen years older and he is dead. She
is upset. She claims to know nothing about this, but
they are now really quickly on unraveling who Evelyn Dick is,
and the police don't like it in Canada, which is
(22:13):
fairly conservative.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Okay, So Evelyn is roughly twenty four years old, She's
been married to John for six months. She's had dating
relationships with these powerful men. Yep. Were these relationships all
before the marriage or were there some relationships occurring during
the marriage?
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yes, yes to both of those. Yes, And I mean
throughout from the first week when they got married all
the way back through she's had relationships. So even though
Evelyn is on their radar, there's a long list of
suspects as far as this goes, you know, who could
have targeted him.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, and at this point, pretty much you're putting all
the chips in on Evelyn and this pool of men
that have been in her life for either a while
or recently.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Is there anything about, you know, the victimology of John
that is separate from this that we need to worry about,
you know, in terms of you know, what I'm trying
to figure out is the reason John is dead because
of something he got involved with versus the marriage to
Evelyn and whatever is going on there.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
You are a brilliant man, Pouls, because yes, yes, yes,
there's all sorts of intersections of him getting involved in
some things he shouldn't be, but that also involved Evelyn.
So let me, I'm so cryptic everything I've felt the
last five minutes.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
You always are.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I think the last five minutes have been the most
cryptic I've ever been with you. Let me tell you
about Evelyn because all of this is important. Her family
details are important. So she's twenty five and he is
thirty nine. She is the only child of two immigrants.
So remember John came from Russia. Her parents, Donald and
Alexandra come from Scotland, and when she was a baby,
(24:00):
they moved from Beamsville, Ontario, to Hamilton and Donald also
drove street cars. The dad, her dad, drove street cars
for the Hamilton Street Railway. And it sounds like that's
how John and Evelyn met was because Donald the dad
and John worked at the same place. Does that make
(24:21):
sense so far?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, So it's like Donald, Evelyn's father, is the one
that potentially introduced John and Evelyn.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yes, yes, so, according to what Marin found in the
source material, Evelyn had a tough childhood. It sounds like
Donald was very temperamental and alcoholic. It sounds like she
was physically abused by both of her parents, and at
times Donald and Alexandra, the mother, would live apart, and
Evelyn often stayed with her mom and Donald, which this
(24:52):
will become important later on. Was really bad with money,
and during her childhood the family lived away beyond their means.
And Donald got this extra income by stealing from his employer.
So that's the same employer that John works for. Right,
this is the railway place. The Waterloo Chronicle, which is
a newspaper, reported that Donald had ripped off the railway
(25:15):
for hundreds of thousands of dollars in nineteen forty six.
It's a lot of money by pilfering fair box money
and tickets over several years. So this is not a
grab money from the till and run. This is somebody
who's stealing money for years and years and years. So
you can imagine that probably John knew about that, and
(25:36):
that's why I'm saying the story is a little more
complicated than you know, just a bad marriage. Now you've
got a father in law who you know has been
doing some pretty bad things, and it would be very
difficult to think that John would not know about it.
We don't know yet.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Well, I'm wondering if John and Evelyn benefited from Donald's
theft of the railways.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Maybe so, you know, it's interesting that she stayed close
with her dad despite their history. But she's apparently close
to both of her parents. She lived with them. I
guess they got back together Alexandra and Donald into her twenties,
and you know, Evelyn grew into being an attractive woman,
sometimes described as a socialite. She is also this is
(26:19):
where we get sexist, boy. Sometimes she's described as an
escort or a sex worker, and it's mostly because Paul,
I mean nineteen forty six. It's mostly because she does
have money and not the job that should be paying
her that money. I suspect that it is her benefiting
from her dad. There's zero evidence that she was ever
(26:41):
a sex worker or an escort, but you know, that
is one thing is that you know, she is described
as this woman who lives beyond her means, and nobody
knows where the money is coming from.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, well, if Dad's stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars
in nineteen forty six money, you know, that's a fair
amount of health that he could distribute to Evelyn. It
does come down to how does this factor into John's
homicide though, you know that's going to be the key.
If did John blackmail Donald yet know something to that effect.
(27:13):
He's estrange from Evelyn at the time of his homicide,
so he's basically saying, I still need money coming from you, Donald,
or I'm going to tell you know, there could potentially
be a motive there. I'll just note that at this
point in time.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Okay, so we'll move along here. Evelyn, as she got older, attracted,
as I've said before, many different kinds of men, and
she dated a lot of rich and prominent local men.
She didn't marry any of them. The Globe and Mail,
which is another newspaper, reported that at the time she
claimed to have had sexual relations with most of the
(27:50):
movers and shakers in Hamilton. This is not against the law.
She can sleep with whoever she wants. And she also
had a string of out of wedlock pregnancies in her
early twenties. Now you can see in nineteen forty six Canada,
why when the police start learning about all of this stuff.
I mean, this is I know it's one hundred and
eighty thousand people, but still it wouldn't have taken long
(28:12):
to figure out her reputation. They zero in on her.
Now that I've heard about Donald and what he is doing.
Now I'm less concerned about Evelyn, a little bit more
concerned about Donald. But you know there are intertwined.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
What do we know so far with this type of
victimology with John? With what you have said so far?
You know that the big question is is who benefits
from John being killed? And what is that benefit? You know,
Evelyn sounds like she has no problem attracting men, and
she can attract men that have far more assets, if
(28:48):
you will, than what John can provide. You know, why
does Evelyn ultimately marry John? You know what kind of
arrangement was there? Did they truly fall in love? Is
there some other reason for that man marriage? And Evelyn
didn't want that marriage, So that's I think a factor.
And then is there a spurned lover of Evelyn? Which
(29:09):
sounds like there very possibly could be, and that spurned
lover decided to take John out, and then of course
all the financial aspects that sounds like this family is
involved with on a criminal level.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I'm not sure John Dick knew what he was getting
into when he married Evelyn and into the family, which
sounds volatile to say the least. Let me tell you
a little bit about her background with kids, which is
also important. So in nineteen forty two, she was twenty
one and she gave birth to a daughter named Heather.
(29:46):
Less than a year later, she gave birth to a
stillborn little girl. About a year and a half later,
she had another child, whom she named Peter, a little boy.
He was healthy. We don't know anything about these fathers.
She gave Peter up for adoption to an organization called
the Children's Aid Society when he was about ten days old.
(30:08):
So all of this is to say, you know, I
had mentioned that before this this would be something that
her parents or would tell the police, or you know,
people would say, this is part of her reputation. She's
given birth, she hasn't been married. John's her first marriage.
So this is all stuff that builds into I think
what'll eventually be the slutshaming part. Of this, it's all
(30:29):
sort of coming together as this is a family, well
at least with Evelyn, this is a family that's troubled.
And now you know, John is dead. None of the
men involved seem right now to be coming into play,
any of the fathers of these kids. But it sounds
like they're all different, you know, fathers. Let's see. Now,
let's get to when she marries John. It's presumably through
(30:52):
her father's work, as I said, with the transportation, with
the railway agency. They meet in summer of nineteen forty five.
He is killed in early March of nineteen forty six.
Who talk about whirlwind. So they meet in the summer
of forty five. First lie. She says to John that
she was widowed after her husband was killed at war,
(31:15):
and that was a lie. So first lie. But so far,
that's all I've been able to find on Evelyn. They
were engaged within weeks of meeting, and then married just
a couple of months after that in October, and then
he's dead in March. So this was very very quick.
He does not have any money, he really doesn't, and
it is you're right, a big question mark about why
(31:37):
this guy when she probably could have married somebody who
was middle class versus maybe more working class. And so
one of the things I think the speculation is that
maybe John sold himself as having more money than he
did because this was so WorldWind I know, Donald was
unhappy about this. Her dad did not want this marriage
to happen, and that's why I'm saying it was unlikely
(31:57):
that he was the one who introduced the two of them.
He was very unhappy that they got married. I'm assuming
that he wanted her to marry one of these rich
guys that she was dating.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, so Donald's perspective is John, you know, he's got
eyes and ears around the job, you know. And maybe
Donald is trying to operate with this financial theft and
doesn't need a family member paying attention to him. So
there's I can see where Donald is not liking this
(32:26):
relationship just from that perspective, and whether or not Donald
was wanting his daughter to actually, you know, marry wealthy
or you know, marry well, you know, that's that could
be a factor. But Evelyn ultimately is one that has
to be making the decision to marry John, and so
I wonder considering who else she has been in relationships
(32:49):
with It still comes down to why John. And maybe
she saw John as a bit of a patsy, somebody
that she could manipulate for whatever reason, and decided to
take advantage of that. And whether or not that occurred,
who knows, But that's something I'm curious about. That relationship
(33:09):
seems odd considering everything surrounding Evelyn during you know, the
years leading up to the marriage.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Well, let's talk about odd. Odd is that she made
the down payment on their house. She's the only one
on the deed to this house. That could not have
made John feel very good. Or maybe he thought, kaching,
I found a woman who has more money than I
do at dad's money. Yeah, you know, I don't know
what he was thinking, but that was a pretty unusual arrangement.
(33:38):
But she is the only one on the deed, which,
because we're talking about a true crime case, is important.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
No, absolutely, it sounds from Evelyn's perspective. You know, any
time you have let's say this, these deeds with property,
you know, typically you hold on to that property for
a period of time, and if it's a married couple,
you usually both people are on that deed. The fact
that in nineteen forty six, a woman is the sole
(34:07):
owner of that property even though she's married. That just
speaks that from whatever perspective she had, there was a
lack of permanence with the marriage to John, and she
was ensuring that, you know, this property would be hers
after the marriage. You know, of course, different states have
(34:29):
different community property aspects, you know, in divorce scenarios. But
you know, right now this we're talking Canada, right, So
I don't even know how that would work up there.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
She must have figured out his money situation before they
got married. I mean, I can't even imagine. Maybe she
really loved him. I don't know. Obviously, was smart of
her putting the money down and making payments I presume
from her dad. She's not working. We don't know where
she's getting the money from. I'm not buying sex worker
stuff just yet. So now let's talk about some big
(35:03):
red flags. Their marriage immediately fell apart, so she would
later say that within days of her wedding she was
I mean, to Evelyn's credit, she's very open about this stuff.
Within days of their wedding, she had already cheated on
him with this guy who will be important later on.
He's twenty seven years old and his name is Bill Bohazik,
(35:23):
so closer to her age, but still she reportedly she
admits to sleeping with more men in the following weeks
of their marriage, and after just three months, the couple
separated and John moved out because it was her house
and he moves in with his cousin. And despite the separation,
he really wants her back. He loves her. He doesn't
(35:46):
want to get a divorce. He calls Evelyn's dad, Donald
and says, please get her to come back to me.
You know, I'm good for her. But Donald basically says,
go kick Rocks. I have zero interesting you being my
son in law anymore. You're not good enough for her anyway,
and that's it. John is getting nowhere in getting Evelyn back.
(36:07):
So she has the house, you know, because it's in
her name, and he is out in the cold on
his cousin's couch.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
It sounds like, well, it just it just speaks to
you know, Evelyn is not changing her lifestyle even though
she's entering into a marriage with John. I mean, considering
she's with Bill, you know, a couple of days after
the marriage, which would generally be you know, at least
in this day and age during the honeymoon period, right, Yeah,
(36:35):
and so this really calls into question in my mind
as to well, why did Evelyn even bother marrying John?
How does it benefit Evelyn to be married to this man?
And so I start questioning Evelyn's motives for this marriage,
you know, and part of maybe this spousal relationship the
legal aspect of being a spouse. And again we're talking Canada,
(36:58):
so I have no idea, but I'm looking at it
from a perspective, well what kicks in that benefits Evelyn
when this marriage goes away and John is killed? And
you know, number one thing that comes into mind is, well,
did she take out a life insurance policy on him?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
There's no evidence of that, no evidence of that kind
of financial gain. We don't see that. Okay, that being said, Paul,
I don't know how you work for something like a
railway and not have some kind of There must have
been some kind of financial benefit for her.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I don't know what, but potentially, yeah, because you could
see where you know, John is thirty nine. Do we
know how long he was working for the railway? This
HSR was it?
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah? I mean I think if this was a long
term thing, this was not an immediate I think this
has been a long time.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
So yes, he potentially has some some sort of long
term benefits that would be passed to his surviving spouse,
you know, And so there could be some sort of
gain on Evelyn's part. But then she could pretend, actually,
I've been rewarded financially by getting involved with some of
these other wealthier men than getting involved with John.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah. Well, now let's get to another one of Evelyn's
really big mistakes. Her big mistake was trusting John to
keep his mouth shut about a family secret. So when
Donald says, bug off, I don't want you with my
daughter anyway, John says, your daughter told me about what
you've been doing, that you've been stealing money, and paul
(38:30):
I looked it up. The amount was probably in the
one and a half to two million dollar range these days.
That's a lot of money over a few years that
he's been stealing. He says, I know all about it.
Your daughter told me all about it, and basically said,
I'll expose this secret if you keep being a jerk
to me, And in response, Donald not surprisingly said I'm
(38:53):
going to kill you. I'll kill you. So John goes
to the police. Oh, and says this guy threatened me. Now,
I don't know if he's he has gone to the
police and said this is what happened, and it sort
of exposed this. I don't know how how quickly. I
don't know the timeframe, like if they said if he
went to the police and exposed the whole scheme, or
(39:15):
if he just said, my father in law said I'm
going to kill you. I don't know which one. I
know that Donald was not under arrest for stealing money
at the time of this torso being discovered, so if
they were investigating, they were at the beginning stages of it.
I feel like he just said he threatened me. I
don't think he exposed anything, but he reported it.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Well obviously you've been holding back on me. Once again,
you're welcome. And that was one of the you know,
one of the early theories that I just kind of,
you know, noodled on. Now at this moment in time,
I think, you know, putting you know, myself in John's mind.
(39:56):
You know, he is he's been benefit from Donald's left
of this money, and it may be because of the
pass through from Evelyn and who knows if John was
getting any you know, hand me downs front directly from Donald,
and so on one hand, you know, you could see
where he recognizes that he has leverage against Donald, you know,
(40:19):
stop treating me poorly, or I'm going to expose this.
But on the other hand, if he exposes it, then
he loses out of any of the financial benefits that
he's been getting as a result of the marriage to Evelyn.
But when Donald threatens him, I'm going to kill you,
you know, now John is worried. So he goes to
law enforcement with that perspective just to get Donald to
(40:43):
back off of that threat but still maintain that desirable
quality of life through the financial means that Evelyn can provide.
So I can see where Donald would have have kind
of walked that line a little bit.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yeah, as I said, I don't know what he exposed
to Hamilton police, but Donald was not under arrest at
the time. So let's go back to the Torso kind
of back to the beginning. So we're back to mid
March nineteen forty six. We know now that the Torso
is John Dick, and they start wondering about alibis. They
(41:17):
want to know where everybody was, so they start looking
into Evelyn's whereabouts ahead of her husband's disappearance. They learned
that the day that he was last seen alive, which
was March sixth, that Evelyn had borrowed a nineteen thirty
eight packard from the owner of a local auto garage
kind of a rental car agency and rudimentary one. This
(41:39):
was something that she did often, So she borrows this car.
She returns at the next morning at eight am. So
this is when we start getting into evidence. Whether or
not you think this is important. I mean, you'll think
this is important, but we really want to see if
this absolutely ties Evelyn to this. They search the car,
they find the car, They search the car. There are
(42:00):
numerous blood stains which are determined to be Type OH,
which is John's type. So of course they're doing blood typing.
But nothing else is common or not common or.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
What is that? No, it's very common, Okay, so it's
not helpful. Really. Yeah. Basically, Type A TYPEO are the
two most common blood types by and then ultimately AB
are rare. So if you get type A type OH,
you know, because I used to do this ABO testing,
it really does not limit the population that you can
include or exclude. So the fact that it's consistent is
(42:35):
important with John's blood type, but at this point you
can't say with any level of certainty it is in
fact John's blood.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Okay, the blood is mostly concentrated on the front seat,
but there are also stains on a necktie and a
sweater that have been left behind that are John's.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
This is so sloppy. This is sloppy.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I mean it really is. If she's the one responsible,
it is. And it gets worse because she returns the
packer with the front seat's slipcover missing, and a blanket
had also been laid out on the seat and that's
also gone. And Evelyn had basically said the blood on
the seats were from her daughter, who had cut her face,
(43:19):
so she obviously gets to see her daughter and was
rushed to the hospital in the car. But this was
of course not true. So I don't care if it's
Evelyn or Donald or Alexandra the mother. Somebody does not
know what they're doing here, because this is very sloppy.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
You're right, yeah, no, this is a very unsophisticated, unorganized
on one part. You know, when you start evaluating offenders
and their actions, you know you have to take into
account that most offenders have never killed before, and so
this is the first time. It's not like there's a
you know, a school that you can go to and
(43:56):
learn how to commit a homicide and get away with it.
You know, you might take time to think about it,
but the dynamics of what happens in the real world
when you try to commit these crimes often is the
undoing for the offender and gets these offenders caught. I'm
going to assume this necktie and bloody shirt that we're
(44:16):
in this packard probably matches items from John, you know,
to leave those behind and turn the car back to
the this I forget what you called it, but this.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Auto autobody shop.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah, with people knowing that you're the one that borrowed
that car to begin with. You know, it's just okay,
there's a lack of forethought going on there in terms of, well,
how can law enforcement backtrack utilizing the evidence as well
as the investigative leads. So I can see where now, yes,
(44:53):
Evelyn becomes a prime suspect in John's homicide as a
result of this, Now she the soul person doing it
or there are others. I think that's the big.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Question that is the big question. So a couple of
other key things that the neighbors were watching her in
awe as that night, she is desperately trying to squeeze
this very large car in their very small garage around
five o'clock or five thirty, so you know, I mean,
she's trying to obviously get the car in the garage
(45:25):
so she can clean it. Sounds like she actually got
it in. When investigators get a warrant, I presume, and
they go into her house, they find blood stained women's
rain boots, as well as that missing blanket covered in
blood that the auto shop owns, and it's cleaned and folded.
Now this is very damning, most damningly, I would say,
(45:48):
bone and teeth fragments are found in coal ashes that
have been spread outside the garage door just behind the house.
Eventually they say that these are John's incinerated remains. And
now this looks super bad for Evelyn and of course
for John. And you're right, now this turns into Evelyn
(46:11):
clearly is involved. We don't know to what extent, But
the big question is whether or not the mother and
the father, or boyfriends or lovers or businessmen or politicians
are also involved with this. Did she need help?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Well, she most certainly could have pulled this off by herself.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Poorly, very poorly, poorly.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Very poorly, for sure. No. But I think back to
the injuries on John. You've got two bullet grayses on
his torso, his head has been cut off. The bullet
grass as the pathologist said, they weren't fatal, and they
bullet grazes aren't. John likely was shot in the head
and then he was decapitated. And with the teeth fragments
(46:55):
in these ashes, it looks like in essence, you know,
at least his head and potentially his arms and legs
were essentially cremated. You know, in this this location, could
Evelyn have shot John in the head. Absolutely, And now
she's just having to manipulate his body, cremate the smaller
(47:16):
body parts, get rid of the torso. Getting rid of
the torso is not easy, you know. That's I don't
know how big John is, but I'm just going to say,
let's say he's an average size mail. You know, even
with his arms and legs and head missing, you know
that torso is going to be weighing one hundred and
twenty one hundred and forty pounds, if not more. The authorities,
(47:36):
the investigators say it look like his torso had been
pushed out of a moving car. I think that's hard
for any driver to do, you know, so that would
possibly suggest minimally a second person present. Then I'm speculating
on that at this point. But right now it's like, okay,
so where are we going from here? Evelyn is suspect
(47:58):
number one.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Here's where we're going from Paul. The police want, of course,
a really thorough search, so they want to find more
signs of John in the house. They climb the stairs
and this is John and Evelyn's house, and they locate
a suitcase. They're hoping to find more of his body parts,
like his head or something, you know, his teeth that
(48:19):
are out there. Like they're just looking for more evidence.
They find a suitcase. They open up the suitcase. When
I read this, I thought they were going to say
they found his legs. They did not. They found a
body and it was not John's body. It's a totally
different person. And I am not going to talk to
you about this for another week or so, so don't
(48:41):
ask any questions. But this woman has a person in
a suitcase in the attic of the home she shared
with the husband, who she clearly was involved in disposing of.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Yeah, Evelyn is a dangerous woman.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
She seems to be, and we'll learn a lot more
about that next week.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
All right, Well, you've got me on the edge once again.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
I like to keep you there. That's the point, to
keep you on the edge. Okay, I'll see you next week,
and I promise I'll have a conclusion for you.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
All right, looking forward to it again. Thanks Lockiate.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
ary Bones Pod.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to Decode the
Criminal Mind is available now
Speaker 1 (49:57):
And Paul's best selling memoir Masked, My life solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now.
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Kate, how are you doing?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing really well. But more importantly, how is Coorra doing?
Because we haven't had a Cora update in a really
long time. What's going on with your dog?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Actually? You know, Cora's doing really well. She of course
is getting older, she's going to be turning twelve this Easter,
and you know, slowing down quite a bit. But you know,
she's actually had quite a bit of a quality of
life improvement lately. You know, I had posted maybe four
months ago on Instagram a picture of Cora down in
(01:33):
my man cave, which is in the basement, and just indicated, hey,
this is very unusual. She's really struggling to navigate stairs.
You know, I thought maybe it was an eyesight problem.
You know, I'd have to kind of guide her down
and she'd be really tentative to come down the stairs.
And it's about fifteen steps. It's not a short, short
(01:53):
thing for her at all. Yeah, and then a couple
of the people, I think about five different people talked
about this, this medication that helps with arthritis pain and
I hadn't even thought about that, and took her into
the vet. She said Cora was a good candidate. You know,
she has some muscle wasting in her legs just from age,
(02:14):
but she got she's on these shots now and it's
like a new dog in many ways. You know, she's
able to get up and down the stairs. She's still
a little tentative. I think there is some eyesight issues,
but even when she goes out for her walks, you know,
she's got a little more pep in her stuff, and
that in part maybe because it's you know, we've predominantly
(02:35):
been through the colder season out here in Colorado, and
she loves the snow. She loves the cold. But you know,
right now, things are doing good and so far, you know,
she's still cancer free, so everything is going good on
Cora front. So you know, for a ninety pounds yellow lab,
yet she's not a small lab. You know, she's a
big lab. And you know she's you know, up there
(03:00):
for the size of dog that she is. But you
know she's been well taken care of. And you know,
the quality of life I think is as improving as
a result of the you know, the social media suggestions
that I got.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I mean I end up getting great suggestions from listeners,
some not so great. Most of the time, I think
they're really helpful. Most of the time. They're really helpful
when you have experts out there, and some many of
our listeners are so smart, which is great. I love
smart listeners and they have all of this expertise. I mean,
I've had just lists of people say I'm in forensics,
(03:37):
or I work with DNA analysis, or I had one
person email me which I loved, who said, I'm an
expert in like colonial weaponry. If you guys ever want
to come out and shoot well, which I think is great, Oh,
very cool. So you know, I really I love getting
suggestions like that, and so especially something that's going to
(03:57):
improve the life of someone we care about so much.
Would you think that the bear encounter was the biggest adventure, trauma,
whatever you want to call it in Cora's life so
far at age twelve, almost, you.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Know, I would say obviously from our perspective. I mean,
she had her side tore open, she got a bite
on her tail, she got some sort of maybe a
claw that went dug into her forehead and had half surgery,
you know. Traumatic for my wife who was with her
at the time, for sure, but Cora didn't seem to care.
(04:35):
And she still tried to take off after a bear.
And when bears come in through our yard, she's barking
at him, you know. So that that said, don't think
that she's going to be scared of bears. You know,
she's still going to go after him. Yeah, which is
just it's so weird. We have so many deer, bunny, rabbits, turkeys,
you name it. Kora just ignores them. Yeah, but if
(04:57):
it's a bear, you know, she turns in to almost
a vicious dog.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Just your look. Yeah, she's like you, she's after the
big prey. That's what she's looking for.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I think is the big prey.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
That's the whole point of this.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
That's kind of a way to put it, I guess.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah. Okay, Well, I'm glad we had a coorra update,
and I'm sure we'll get a fish update at some point.
We don't have time right now, frankly, for a fish update, Paul,
because you really geek out on your aquarium. I'm assuming
everything is okay with the aquarium as of now.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
As of now, yeah, you know it's right here to
my right, I can almost touch it, and yeah we can.
We can talk fish some other time.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Okay, we have a busy day. So this is going
to be a two parter. You know, this is a
story in Canada, set in Canada. Love Love, Love Canada.
This is a story I think about a complicated family,
complicated relationship. But it starts the way I'm always interested
in these sorts of stories, starting, which is with a
(06:00):
body part found near water. So that isn't that usually
the beginning of a pretty decent true crime story, one
that we want to really dig into.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, you know, I've had multiple cases that you know,
parts of body have been on the shoreline, so it
usually means something bad has happened.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, okay, let's go ahead and set the scene.
We are in nineteen forty six Ontario, Canada, and we're
in the city of Hamilton, which is on the western
end of Lake Ontario. So for sort of a sense
of geography, because I don't know much about Canada, Okay, well,
I mean I've been to Toronto, I've been to Vancouver,
(06:42):
I've been to Montreal, and that's it for Canada. But
I loved all three of those cities.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
What about you, Yeah, you know, I've been to Vancouver,
and then I flew into Toronto and gave a presentation
to some college students there, then drove to Ottawa, okay,
you know, and ended up it was like a four
hour drive, and so it was first time I've ever
experienced sort of the Canadian countryside, you know. And I
(07:08):
always enjoy driving and just looking around, so that was
really cool. But don't have much experience at all up
in Canada.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, and I didn't either, And I actually had to
look up quite a few things, just procedural stuff that
I didn't know about. You'll care about it in a
little bit, okay, let's get back to Canada. So nineteen
forty six, Ontario. We're in Hamilton, which is about forty
miles southwest of Toronto fifty five miles northwest of Buffalo,
New York. I always forget how close parts of New
(07:36):
York and Canada are. In Hamilton, the population is at
about one hundred and eighty thousand in the mid nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh, it's a pretty big placing.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I have very little reference for Canada as far as
the size of cities, but it did seem like a
pretty good size for in the nineteen forties. So we've
talked about this so many times. It's unreal. Kids finding
terrible things because kids are kids and they like to
get into stuff and mess around. So on October sixteenth,
there's a group of kids that are hiking along a trail.
(08:07):
This is near an area called Albion Falls, and they
stumble upon a male torso. So this is probably my
nativity with this, but it's limbless and headless. I would
know this. I understood this part, but I guess I
didn't also know that the definition of the torso would
be the back, the abdomen, and the chest and the
(08:30):
pelvis And the reason that this is even a thing
is because the torso is dressed in a pair of
shorts and an undershirt, which seemed really weird, And at
first I thought shorts on a torso, But then you know,
Maren said, well pelvis is included with that traumatizing scene
for these kids.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Oh yeah, no, absolutely, you know this is a headless,
limbless body, right, so in essence, you know, of course
I want to hear how the dismemberment occurred, right, because
oftentimes the body is bisected, you know, through the abdominal area,
because all you know, the hardest part is just cutting
through the spine. But here you've got somebody. Sounds like
(09:12):
they're trying to remove the body parts that could lead
to identification, the head, the hands. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
They're leaving on shorts and an undershirt. I don't know
why I found that weird and surprising, but I did.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Well, well, I think the question is is did they
actually leave those items of clothing on, or did they
redress this torso maybe for you know, moving the body
around for you know, I don't know if you want
to say, if it's just to make it a little
bit less bloody, for them. Do you have pictures?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
No, I don't know you've loved have pictures of the
HEADLESSLM mis torso, do not. I have a picture of
the area, though, which could be helpful. The police, of
course respond, I'm imagining it's cold. It's March in Canada,
so that's good news for us. But these are body
parts that are found along or near a trail. So
let me show you the scene, which is probably going
(10:09):
to be the most helpful photo that I have, So
hang on so you'll see the really helpful little black
arrow pointed to where it's found. And the police essentially
say they think that that the killer or somebody was
driving along this road and just toss the torso out.
It's not buried, it's not really hidden, it's just sort
(10:30):
of dumped.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah. So I'm looking at a picture and this appears
to be a picture where the photographer is capturing what
appears to be a dirt road that has a relatively
steep embankment going off of the far side of the
road from where the photographer is standing, and you know,
fairly significant number of trees and bushes with no leaves
(10:56):
on them, so it's obviously now fall wintertime. You know,
I think the determination of whether the torso was pushed
out of a moving vehicle or had been pulled out
is more you know how the torso was positioned, you know,
down this embankment as well as you know this car
is moving and the torso is just kind of pushed out,
(11:17):
And that's not necessarily an easy thing if you're dealing
with just a single offender who's also driving. But if
that torso has momentum forward, then of course it's going
to tumble some distance if the car has any speed,
and so there would probably be a fair amount of
abrasion showing this tumbling action. And that's where you know,
photos could be helpful. But at this point in time,
(11:41):
you know, this looks like a relatively straightforward body dump location.
It's a location in which, once the torso has put
down the embankment, if it falls far enough down this embankment,
then people passing by probably would not pay any attention,
not know that it's there.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
If they are trying to conceal the identity of this man,
then why would they just not cut off the head
and cut off the hands, Because fingerprinting would have been
a thing in forty six. Why not cut off the
hands and cut off the head and that's it. Why
go to the trouble of this total dismemberment. Would you
think at this point.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Well, you know, I think there's a couple of reasons.
You know, first, if the dismemberment is just to prevent
identification or delay identification, I've got a body, an old
cold case in which the head and the hand's been
cut off, and then the body was weighed down in
the Sacramento River delta, but it ended up bobbing. So
(12:43):
now we had a headless torso, if you will, bobbing
in the waves and was easily found. When you think
about identification, of course, people are thinking about the facial features,
you know, the fingerprints from the hands. Now does this
torso have any identifying tattoos on the upper arms, on
the legs, and is there a reason to remove those
(13:06):
limbs to prevent the tattoos from being seen or other
characteristics that might help somebody identify the body. Oftentimes, you know,
the limbs are removed in order to have a smaller
package to move around, you know. So there's also that
component of dismemberment. But that's where you start to see
(13:28):
as I mentioned earlier, now the torso itself is bisected
in the abdominal area, so now you have smaller packages
to be able to package up and distribute, you know,
across the countryside. If that's what your plans are.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Do you remember the story of the woman who either
murdered or participated in the murder of a man and
carried his torso wrapped in I think what they were
describing as like a hat strap, where you would, you know,
have a hat box and put straps around. And she
had this torso wrapped up in this package and carried
it on a train, and people thought it was so odd.
(14:06):
And that was the idea of exactly what she said,
which is it was easy to transport. And then she
did kind of this. She dumped it by our riverbank,
I think, is what it was in that case, So
that makes sense. I will say, there are some odd
identifying things about this torso. So if they were aiming
to not be able to have corroborating details between who
(14:30):
we find out the victim is versus this torso, I
don't think they did a great job. But let me
tell you a couple of things first. Okay, so they
don't find any other body parts. Okay, so it's just
this torso. And they think the torso has been here
for about ten days. And as I said, they thought
that it was tossed out of a moving car before
(14:51):
winding up in this resting spot. Now there's a little
list of interesting things. Okay. There are two superficial gunshot
wounds on the chest. No bullets, so skimming or whatever
you want to call it. They don't know what the
size are, but the medical examiner said this did not
kill him. They're superficial wounds. But somebody was shooting at
(15:11):
the sky, so no casing, no bullets. There are two
features that they are going to find helpful and I
might need your help on both. One is assist on
the torso's posterior. That's like tushi, right. I know that's
not the technical term, but if they're saying posterior, it's
the backside.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I mean it could be the buttocks, it could be
the back Okay. But yeah, obviously there's some sort of mass,
you know, cysts like mass on the back of this torso.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Also something I really know nothing about, which is a
undescended testicle. What does that mean? You see, you're smiling.
Is this really something you can use in help anything
helpful in an investigation?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Potentially, because when males are developing, the testes of course
developed internally, and then as this male develops, the testes
descend down into the scrotal sack, and you can have
boys born with undeescended testicles or one undeescended testicle as
(16:16):
it sounds like in this case. So it's a physical
feature that could potentially be useful to help identify this body.
If a loved one comes forward, a spouse, a family
member and says, hey, you know our son, my husband,
whatever is missing. What are some physical characteristics and outside
(16:38):
of size, highweight or whatever, it's like, well, also the
undeescended testes, you know, that could be something that they go, okay, well,
this is like this torso's matching up with the description
of this missing person, and it may be something that
could be used, you know, in nineteen forty six put
in the newspapers. It's a little bit personal, but you know,
if you're trying to figure out who this guy is,
(17:00):
that's a feature.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
They finally put it together who the torso is, and
he is a thirty nine year old man. His name
is John Dick and he came from Russia to Canada
about twenty years earlier, in the nineteen twenties, and he
is missing. He's been declared missing for around two weeks
ten days, which is how long the medical examiner thought
(17:24):
the torso had been there. He's a bus and streetcar
driver for the Hamilton Street Railway, which is the city's
transport agency. He was last seen March sixth, nineteen forty six,
so ten days earlier, but we don't really know where.
The reports have varied. Some say that he was as
cousin's house, where he was living at the time, even
(17:45):
though he's married. Others say that he was eating a
meal at the Windsor Hotel in Hamilton. But really the
big deal is that he is married, and the police
want to talk to his wife, whose name is Evelyn,
as soon as possible. He has just been newly married
six months earlier. So they don't know very much about
him except that he's a laborer and you know, see
(18:08):
no record, seems to be a good citizen and now
he is this torso And they don't have any other
body parts so far, and they don't have a conclusive
cause of death.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
How old did you say?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
He was thirty nine? So what did you think about
that with the dicended testicle?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, so, who reported him missing?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Sounds like his wife, So.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I would assume that she's aware that, you know, this
is one of his characteristics. And when they find this torso,
you know she comes in and reports John missing, you know,
this would be something where they'd call her up and say, hey,
can you give us some more information about, you know,
his physical state.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, and if she.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Mentioned this and they're going, okay, we might be on
the right track here that this could be John. But
in terms of you know, that physical trait, you know,
I would never rely upon something like that as the
sole means of identification. It's just a consistent feature. And
so now more needs to be done to identify this torso.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Okay, Well, it sounds like they're fairly confident. I guess
some of the clothing from the torso matches his, and
he's been missing, and Evelyn is completely freaking out his
wife and they've only been married about six months. I
will tell you that they obviously think this is murder,
and they think Evelyn had something to do with it,
because there's no one right now in his inner circle
(19:32):
that they can identify that would be problematic. Ethlen Dick
is problematic as a suspect and as a witness. And
I will also say that this is going to be
a story involves slutshaming, which I hate that phrase, but
there's no other way to describe it in this story.
And so I think that our edict is to figure
(19:54):
out the actual facts in this case, because it is
still a mystery here versus you know, what is all
the smoke and mirrors and the circumstantial stuff that happens.
They are very quickly zeroing in on Evelyn because she
has quite a reputation, and we can kind of talk
about your experience maybe with that in more modern cases too.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
You mentioned that John was living with his cousin at
the time he goes missing, and not with Evelyn. M hm.
So it sounds like he's estranged in the marriage. Even
though they I mean literally been married only six months.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
They've been having a really hard time almost immediately, they
had a hard time, okay, And I can give you
some background on her and on them, and you know,
normally I would sort of take you through different suspects
and different potentials there aren't any other potentials here. It's
whether or not. This is a strong case, I think
with Evelyn, and there are a lot of people involved.
(20:54):
So he's living with a cousin right now because they
are having almost immediate problems in their marriage.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Absolutely okay. So they obviously after figuring out this torso
is John, then they interview Evelyn.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yep, they do. She is upset and frantic and confused
about what happened, and the police start digging around and
trying to figure out who she is. Because it doesn't
take long to figure out that Evelyn has had quite
a reputation. She's sort of unframed as a social light
in the nineteen forties in a socialite Paul, because she
(21:27):
has dated really powerful people in this area, in this
part of candidate, powerful men, so that that immediately puts
her on their on the police's radar because they start
thinking immediately, well, who else could be responsible? She wants
to knock this guy off for whatever reason. And I
don't know if that's fair yet, We'll have to see.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
No. And when you say powerful men, I'm assuming politically
and or financially powerful.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yep, business politics, you name it. Okay, So the facts
are right now John is dead fifteen years older, so
her husband's fifteen years older and he is dead. She
is upset. She claims to know nothing about this, but
they are now really quickly on unraveling who Evelyn Dick is,
and the police don't like it in Canada, which is
(22:13):
fairly conservative.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Okay, So Evelyn is roughly twenty four years old, She's
been married to John for six months. She's had dating
relationships with these powerful men. Yep. Were these relationships all
before the marriage or were there some relationships occurring during
the marriage?
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yes, yes to both of those. Yes, And I mean
throughout from the first week when they got married all
the way back through she's had relationships. So even though
Evelyn is on their radar, there's a long list of
suspects as far as this goes, you know, who could
have targeted him.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, and at this point, pretty much you're putting all
the chips in on Evelyn and this pool of men
that have been in her life for either a while
or recently.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Is there anything about, you know, the victimology of John
that is separate from this that we need to worry about,
you know, in terms of you know, what I'm trying
to figure out is the reason John is dead because
of something he got involved with versus the marriage to
Evelyn and whatever is going on there.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
You are a brilliant man, Pouls, because yes, yes, yes,
there's all sorts of intersections of him getting involved in
some things he shouldn't be, but that also involved Evelyn.
So let me, I'm so cryptic everything I've felt the
last five minutes.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
You always are.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I think the last five minutes have been the most
cryptic I've ever been with you. Let me tell you
about Evelyn because all of this is important. Her family
details are important. So she's twenty five and he is
thirty nine. She is the only child of two immigrants.
So remember John came from Russia. Her parents, Donald and
Alexandra come from Scotland, and when she was a baby,
(24:00):
they moved from Beamsville, Ontario, to Hamilton and Donald also
drove street cars. The dad, her dad, drove street cars
for the Hamilton Street Railway. And it sounds like that's
how John and Evelyn met was because Donald the dad
and John worked at the same place. Does that make
(24:21):
sense so far?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, So it's like Donald, Evelyn's father, is the one
that potentially introduced John and Evelyn.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yes, yes, so, according to what Marin found in the
source material, Evelyn had a tough childhood. It sounds like
Donald was very temperamental and alcoholic. It sounds like she
was physically abused by both of her parents, and at
times Donald and Alexandra, the mother, would live apart, and
Evelyn often stayed with her mom and Donald, which this
(24:52):
will become important later on. Was really bad with money,
and during her childhood the family lived away beyond their means.
And Donald got this extra income by stealing from his employer.
So that's the same employer that John works for. Right,
this is the railway place. The Waterloo Chronicle, which is
a newspaper, reported that Donald had ripped off the railway
(25:15):
for hundreds of thousands of dollars in nineteen forty six.
It's a lot of money by pilfering fair box money
and tickets over several years. So this is not a
grab money from the till and run. This is somebody
who's stealing money for years and years and years. So
you can imagine that probably John knew about that, and
(25:36):
that's why I'm saying the story is a little more
complicated than you know, just a bad marriage. Now you've
got a father in law who you know has been
doing some pretty bad things, and it would be very
difficult to think that John would not know about it.
We don't know yet.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Well, I'm wondering if John and Evelyn benefited from Donald's
theft of the railways.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Maybe so, you know, it's interesting that she stayed close
with her dad despite their history. But she's apparently close
to both of her parents. She lived with them. I
guess they got back together Alexandra and Donald into her twenties,
and you know, Evelyn grew into being an attractive woman,
sometimes described as a socialite. She is also this is
(26:19):
where we get sexist, boy. Sometimes she's described as an
escort or a sex worker, and it's mostly because Paul,
I mean nineteen forty six. It's mostly because she does
have money and not the job that should be paying
her that money. I suspect that it is her benefiting
from her dad. There's zero evidence that she was ever
(26:41):
a sex worker or an escort, but you know, that
is one thing is that you know, she is described
as this woman who lives beyond her means, and nobody
knows where the money is coming from.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, well, if Dad's stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars
in nineteen forty six money, you know, that's a fair
amount of health that he could distribute to Evelyn. It
does come down to how does this factor into John's
homicide though, you know that's going to be the key.
If did John blackmail Donald yet know something to that effect.
(27:13):
He's estrange from Evelyn at the time of his homicide,
so he's basically saying, I still need money coming from you, Donald,
or I'm going to tell you know, there could potentially
be a motive there. I'll just note that at this
point in time.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Okay, so we'll move along here. Evelyn, as she got older, attracted,
as I've said before, many different kinds of men, and
she dated a lot of rich and prominent local men.
She didn't marry any of them. The Globe and Mail,
which is another newspaper, reported that at the time she
claimed to have had sexual relations with most of the
(27:50):
movers and shakers in Hamilton. This is not against the law.
She can sleep with whoever she wants. And she also
had a string of out of wedlock pregnancies in her
early twenties. Now you can see in nineteen forty six Canada,
why when the police start learning about all of this stuff.
I mean, this is I know it's one hundred and
eighty thousand people, but still it wouldn't have taken long
(28:12):
to figure out her reputation. They zero in on her.
Now that I've heard about Donald and what he is doing.
Now I'm less concerned about Evelyn, a little bit more
concerned about Donald. But you know there are intertwined.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
What do we know so far with this type of
victimology with John? With what you have said so far?
You know that the big question is is who benefits
from John being killed? And what is that benefit? You know,
Evelyn sounds like she has no problem attracting men, and
she can attract men that have far more assets, if
(28:48):
you will, than what John can provide. You know, why
does Evelyn ultimately marry John? You know what kind of
arrangement was there? Did they truly fall in love? Is
there some other reason for that man marriage? And Evelyn
didn't want that marriage, So that's I think a factor.
And then is there a spurned lover of Evelyn? Which
(29:09):
sounds like there very possibly could be, and that spurned
lover decided to take John out, and then of course
all the financial aspects that sounds like this family is
involved with on a criminal level.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I'm not sure John Dick knew what he was getting
into when he married Evelyn and into the family, which
sounds volatile to say the least. Let me tell you
a little bit about her background with kids, which is
also important. So in nineteen forty two, she was twenty
one and she gave birth to a daughter named Heather.
(29:46):
Less than a year later, she gave birth to a
stillborn little girl. About a year and a half later,
she had another child, whom she named Peter, a little boy.
He was healthy. We don't know anything about these fathers.
She gave Peter up for adoption to an organization called
the Children's Aid Society when he was about ten days old.
(30:08):
So all of this is to say, you know, I
had mentioned that before this this would be something that
her parents or would tell the police, or you know,
people would say, this is part of her reputation. She's
given birth, she hasn't been married. John's her first marriage.
So this is all stuff that builds into I think
what'll eventually be the slutshaming part. Of this, it's all
(30:29):
sort of coming together as this is a family, well
at least with Evelyn, this is a family that's troubled.
And now you know, John is dead. None of the
men involved seem right now to be coming into play,
any of the fathers of these kids. But it sounds
like they're all different, you know, fathers. Let's see. Now,
let's get to when she marries John. It's presumably through
(30:52):
her father's work, as I said, with the transportation, with
the railway agency. They meet in summer of nineteen forty five.
He is killed in early March of nineteen forty six.
Who talk about whirlwind. So they meet in the summer
of forty five. First lie. She says to John that
she was widowed after her husband was killed at war,
(31:15):
and that was a lie. So first lie. But so far,
that's all I've been able to find on Evelyn. They
were engaged within weeks of meeting, and then married just
a couple of months after that in October, and then
he's dead in March. So this was very very quick.
He does not have any money, he really doesn't, and
it is you're right, a big question mark about why
(31:37):
this guy when she probably could have married somebody who
was middle class versus maybe more working class. And so
one of the things I think the speculation is that
maybe John sold himself as having more money than he
did because this was so WorldWind I know, Donald was
unhappy about this. Her dad did not want this marriage
to happen, and that's why I'm saying it was unlikely
(31:57):
that he was the one who introduced the two of them.
He was very unhappy that they got married. I'm assuming
that he wanted her to marry one of these rich
guys that she was dating.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, so Donald's perspective is John, you know, he's got
eyes and ears around the job, you know. And maybe
Donald is trying to operate with this financial theft and
doesn't need a family member paying attention to him. So
there's I can see where Donald is not liking this
(32:26):
relationship just from that perspective, and whether or not Donald
was wanting his daughter to actually, you know, marry wealthy
or you know, marry well, you know, that's that could
be a factor. But Evelyn ultimately is one that has
to be making the decision to marry John, and so
I wonder considering who else she has been in relationships
(32:49):
with It still comes down to why John. And maybe
she saw John as a bit of a patsy, somebody
that she could manipulate for whatever reason, and decided to
take advantage of that. And whether or not that occurred,
who knows, But that's something I'm curious about. That relationship
(33:09):
seems odd considering everything surrounding Evelyn during you know, the
years leading up to the marriage.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Well, let's talk about odd. Odd is that she made
the down payment on their house. She's the only one
on the deed to this house. That could not have
made John feel very good. Or maybe he thought, kaching,
I found a woman who has more money than I
do at dad's money. Yeah, you know, I don't know
what he was thinking, but that was a pretty unusual arrangement.
(33:38):
But she is the only one on the deed, which,
because we're talking about a true crime case, is important.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
No, absolutely, it sounds from Evelyn's perspective. You know, any
time you have let's say this, these deeds with property,
you know, typically you hold on to that property for
a period of time, and if it's a married couple,
you usually both people are on that deed. The fact
that in nineteen forty six, a woman is the sole
(34:07):
owner of that property even though she's married. That just
speaks that from whatever perspective she had, there was a
lack of permanence with the marriage to John, and she
was ensuring that, you know, this property would be hers
after the marriage. You know, of course, different states have
(34:29):
different community property aspects, you know, in divorce scenarios. But
you know, right now this we're talking Canada, right, So
I don't even know how that would work up there.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
She must have figured out his money situation before they
got married. I mean, I can't even imagine. Maybe she
really loved him. I don't know. Obviously, was smart of
her putting the money down and making payments I presume
from her dad. She's not working. We don't know where
she's getting the money from. I'm not buying sex worker
stuff just yet. So now let's talk about some big
(35:03):
red flags. Their marriage immediately fell apart, so she would
later say that within days of her wedding she was
I mean, to Evelyn's credit, she's very open about this stuff.
Within days of their wedding, she had already cheated on
him with this guy who will be important later on.
He's twenty seven years old and his name is Bill Bohazik,
(35:23):
so closer to her age, but still she reportedly she
admits to sleeping with more men in the following weeks
of their marriage, and after just three months, the couple
separated and John moved out because it was her house
and he moves in with his cousin. And despite the separation,
he really wants her back. He loves her. He doesn't
(35:46):
want to get a divorce. He calls Evelyn's dad, Donald
and says, please get her to come back to me.
You know, I'm good for her. But Donald basically says,
go kick Rocks. I have zero interesting you being my
son in law anymore. You're not good enough for her anyway,
and that's it. John is getting nowhere in getting Evelyn back.
(36:07):
So she has the house, you know, because it's in
her name, and he is out in the cold on
his cousin's couch.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
It sounds like, well, it just it just speaks to
you know, Evelyn is not changing her lifestyle even though
she's entering into a marriage with John. I mean, considering
she's with Bill, you know, a couple of days after
the marriage, which would generally be you know, at least
in this day and age during the honeymoon period, right, Yeah,
(36:35):
and so this really calls into question in my mind
as to well, why did Evelyn even bother marrying John?
How does it benefit Evelyn to be married to this man?
And so I start questioning Evelyn's motives for this marriage,
you know, and part of maybe this spousal relationship the
legal aspect of being a spouse. And again we're talking Canada,
(36:58):
so I have no idea, but I'm looking at it
from a perspective, well what kicks in that benefits Evelyn
when this marriage goes away and John is killed? And
you know, number one thing that comes into mind is, well,
did she take out a life insurance policy on him?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
There's no evidence of that, no evidence of that kind
of financial gain. We don't see that. Okay, that being said, Paul,
I don't know how you work for something like a
railway and not have some kind of There must have
been some kind of financial benefit for her.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I don't know what, but potentially, yeah, because you could
see where you know, John is thirty nine. Do we
know how long he was working for the railway? This
HSR was it?
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah? I mean I think if this was a long
term thing, this was not an immediate I think this
has been a long time.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
So yes, he potentially has some some sort of long
term benefits that would be passed to his surviving spouse,
you know, And so there could be some sort of
gain on Evelyn's part. But then she could pretend, actually,
I've been rewarded financially by getting involved with some of
these other wealthier men than getting involved with John.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah. Well, now let's get to another one of Evelyn's
really big mistakes. Her big mistake was trusting John to
keep his mouth shut about a family secret. So when
Donald says, bug off, I don't want you with my
daughter anyway, John says, your daughter told me about what
you've been doing, that you've been stealing money, and paul
(38:30):
I looked it up. The amount was probably in the
one and a half to two million dollar range these days.
That's a lot of money over a few years that
he's been stealing. He says, I know all about it.
Your daughter told me all about it, and basically said,
I'll expose this secret if you keep being a jerk
to me, And in response, Donald not surprisingly said I'm
(38:53):
going to kill you. I'll kill you. So John goes
to the police. Oh, and says this guy threatened me. Now,
I don't know if he's he has gone to the
police and said this is what happened, and it sort
of exposed this. I don't know how how quickly. I
don't know the timeframe, like if they said if he
went to the police and exposed the whole scheme, or
(39:15):
if he just said, my father in law said I'm
going to kill you. I don't know which one. I
know that Donald was not under arrest for stealing money
at the time of this torso being discovered, so if
they were investigating, they were at the beginning stages of it.
I feel like he just said he threatened me. I
don't think he exposed anything, but he reported it.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Well obviously you've been holding back on me. Once again,
you're welcome. And that was one of the you know,
one of the early theories that I just kind of,
you know, noodled on. Now at this moment in time,
I think, you know, putting you know, myself in John's mind.
(39:56):
You know, he is he's been benefit from Donald's left
of this money, and it may be because of the
pass through from Evelyn and who knows if John was
getting any you know, hand me downs front directly from Donald,
and so on one hand, you know, you could see
where he recognizes that he has leverage against Donald, you know,
(40:19):
stop treating me poorly, or I'm going to expose this.
But on the other hand, if he exposes it, then
he loses out of any of the financial benefits that
he's been getting as a result of the marriage to Evelyn.
But when Donald threatens him, I'm going to kill you,
you know, now John is worried. So he goes to
law enforcement with that perspective just to get Donald to
(40:43):
back off of that threat but still maintain that desirable
quality of life through the financial means that Evelyn can provide.
So I can see where Donald would have have kind
of walked that line a little bit.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yeah, as I said, I don't know what he exposed
to Hamilton police, but Donald was not under arrest at
the time. So let's go back to the Torso kind
of back to the beginning. So we're back to mid
March nineteen forty six. We know now that the Torso
is John Dick, and they start wondering about alibis. They
(41:17):
want to know where everybody was, so they start looking
into Evelyn's whereabouts ahead of her husband's disappearance. They learned
that the day that he was last seen alive, which
was March sixth, that Evelyn had borrowed a nineteen thirty
eight packard from the owner of a local auto garage
kind of a rental car agency and rudimentary one. This
(41:39):
was something that she did often, So she borrows this car.
She returns at the next morning at eight am. So
this is when we start getting into evidence. Whether or
not you think this is important. I mean, you'll think
this is important, but we really want to see if
this absolutely ties Evelyn to this. They search the car,
they find the car, They search the car. There are
(42:00):
numerous blood stains which are determined to be Type OH,
which is John's type. So of course they're doing blood typing.
But nothing else is common or not common or.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
What is that? No, it's very common, Okay, so it's
not helpful. Really. Yeah. Basically, Type A TYPEO are the
two most common blood types by and then ultimately AB
are rare. So if you get type A type OH,
you know, because I used to do this ABO testing,
it really does not limit the population that you can
include or exclude. So the fact that it's consistent is
(42:35):
important with John's blood type, but at this point you
can't say with any level of certainty it is in
fact John's blood.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Okay, the blood is mostly concentrated on the front seat,
but there are also stains on a necktie and a
sweater that have been left behind that are John's.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
This is so sloppy. This is sloppy.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
I mean it really is. If she's the one responsible,
it is. And it gets worse because she returns the
packer with the front seat's slipcover missing, and a blanket
had also been laid out on the seat and that's
also gone. And Evelyn had basically said the blood on
the seats were from her daughter, who had cut her face,
(43:19):
so she obviously gets to see her daughter and was
rushed to the hospital in the car. But this was
of course not true. So I don't care if it's
Evelyn or Donald or Alexandra the mother. Somebody does not
know what they're doing here, because this is very sloppy.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
You're right, yeah, no, this is a very unsophisticated, unorganized
on one part. You know, when you start evaluating offenders
and their actions, you know you have to take into
account that most offenders have never killed before, and so
this is the first time. It's not like there's a
you know, a school that you can go to and
(43:56):
learn how to commit a homicide and get away with it.
You know, you might take time to think about it,
but the dynamics of what happens in the real world
when you try to commit these crimes often is the
undoing for the offender and gets these offenders caught. I'm
going to assume this necktie and bloody shirt that we're
(44:16):
in this packard probably matches items from John, you know,
to leave those behind and turn the car back to
the this I forget what you called it, but this.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Auto autobody shop.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah, with people knowing that you're the one that borrowed
that car to begin with. You know, it's just okay,
there's a lack of forethought going on there in terms of, well,
how can law enforcement backtrack utilizing the evidence as well
as the investigative leads. So I can see where now, yes,
(44:53):
Evelyn becomes a prime suspect in John's homicide as a
result of this, Now she the soul person doing it
or there are others. I think that's the big.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Question that is the big question. So a couple of
other key things that the neighbors were watching her in
awe as that night, she is desperately trying to squeeze
this very large car in their very small garage around
five o'clock or five thirty, so you know, I mean,
she's trying to obviously get the car in the garage
(45:25):
so she can clean it. Sounds like she actually got
it in. When investigators get a warrant, I presume, and
they go into her house, they find blood stained women's
rain boots, as well as that missing blanket covered in
blood that the auto shop owns, and it's cleaned and folded.
Now this is very damning, most damningly, I would say,
(45:48):
bone and teeth fragments are found in coal ashes that
have been spread outside the garage door just behind the house.
Eventually they say that these are John's incinerated remains. And
now this looks super bad for Evelyn and of course
for John. And you're right, now this turns into Evelyn
(46:11):
clearly is involved. We don't know to what extent, But
the big question is whether or not the mother and
the father, or boyfriends or lovers or businessmen or politicians
are also involved with this. Did she need help?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Well, she most certainly could have pulled this off by herself.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Poorly, very poorly, poorly.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Very poorly, for sure. No. But I think back to
the injuries on John. You've got two bullet grayses on
his torso, his head has been cut off. The bullet
grass as the pathologist said, they weren't fatal, and they
bullet grazes aren't. John likely was shot in the head
and then he was decapitated. And with the teeth fragments
(46:55):
in these ashes, it looks like in essence, you know,
at least his head and potentially his arms and legs
were essentially cremated. You know, in this this location, could
Evelyn have shot John in the head. Absolutely, And now
she's just having to manipulate his body, cremate the smaller
(47:16):
body parts, get rid of the torso. Getting rid of
the torso is not easy, you know. That's I don't
know how big John is, but I'm just going to say,
let's say he's an average size mail. You know, even
with his arms and legs and head missing, you know
that torso is going to be weighing one hundred and
twenty one hundred and forty pounds, if not more. The authorities,
(47:36):
the investigators say it look like his torso had been
pushed out of a moving car. I think that's hard
for any driver to do, you know, so that would
possibly suggest minimally a second person present. Then I'm speculating
on that at this point. But right now it's like, okay,
so where are we going from here? Evelyn is suspect
(47:58):
number one.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Here's where we're going from Paul. The police want, of course,
a really thorough search, so they want to find more
signs of John in the house. They climb the stairs
and this is John and Evelyn's house, and they locate
a suitcase. They're hoping to find more of his body parts,
like his head or something, you know, his teeth that
(48:19):
are out there. Like they're just looking for more evidence.
They find a suitcase. They open up the suitcase. When
I read this, I thought they were going to say
they found his legs. They did not. They found a
body and it was not John's body. It's a totally
different person. And I am not going to talk to
you about this for another week or so, so don't
(48:41):
ask any questions. But this woman has a person in
a suitcase in the attic of the home she shared
with the husband, who she clearly was involved in disposing of.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Yeah, Evelyn is a dangerous woman.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
She seems to be, and we'll learn a lot more
about that next week.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
All right, Well, you've got me on the edge once again.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
I like to keep you there. That's the point, to
keep you on the edge. Okay, I'll see you next week,
and I promise I'll have a conclusion for you.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
All right, looking forward to it again. Thanks Lockiate.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
ary Bones Pod.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to Decode the
Criminal Mind is available now
Speaker 1 (49:57):
And Paul's best selling memoir Masked, My life solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now.
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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