Missing Pieces PT 2

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

Some are solved and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

How are you?

I'm fine because I know everything about this story and you don't know anything about the rest of this story.

And I know you've been thinking about it, haven't you?

Well, yeah.

Well, it's so unusual because walking down this John and Evelyn relationship and John ends up dead and partially dismembered.

And you're thinking, okay, you know, they took care of a problem.

But then you tell me there's another body in a suitcase in Evelyn's residence.

So now I'm extraordinarily curious as to where this is going to go.

I will say this part of the story surprised me a little bit.

So let me go back just in case people have forgotten the details of the story, which I cannot imagine you have, but you might have.

So we are in Ontario, Canada.

We are in Hamilton, which is a medium-sized city.

1946, mid-March, torso is found partially partially dressed and turns out to be a man named John Dick.

He was a streetcar driver for a transportation agency in the city.

He worked, it sounds like, near or with his father-in-law, whose name is Donald.

And Donald's daughter is John's wife, and her name is Evelyn.

Certainly, they had different approaches to marriage because she admitted that she's been cheating on him before, during, and after marriage.

That, you you know, their marriage only lasted a few months.

They had a quick romance, a quick engagement, a quick wedding, and then a quick ending.

After three months, he moved out into his cousin's house.

And Evelyn took up with a young man a couple years older than her named Bill.

And now the police want to know about everything that's happening in this house.

She had a car, a Packard that had blood in it, that was type O, which was John's type.

There are bone fragments and teeth pieces in ashes outside of their house.

The police have now ascended the staircase to the attic and have found a suitcase that has a body in it.

And that's where I left off with you because we weren't sure, before we get to that other body, we weren't sure about the father-in-law's involvement.

Maybe the mother-in-law is involved too.

We know that John threatened Evelyn's father, Donald, by exposing that Donald Donald has been stealing, I mean, in today's money, upwards of $2 million

from the city department, which was very serious.

So now you've got somebody who's been threatened, and

he's very clearly has body parts at this location.

They're obviously involved in some way.

The question is, how involved is Evelyn?

Is she just covering it up?

Or was she directly involved?

Does it matter?

I think it will matter how involved she was.

Oh, it absolutely does matter.

And, you know, I think one of the big questions with the second body in the suitcase is who has access to this location.

You know, is this something where people like Donald, the father, can freely come and go?

I completely forgot about Bill, you know, this new boyfriend of hers, you know, and what is his potential involvement in John's homicide.

And then who is the second body?

Is this, you know, on one hand, maybe this is all wrapped around Donald trying to protect his financial interests with this, this, I'm assuming, an embezzlement type scheme out of the railway.

Or do we have some sort of predator?

You know, do we have this female serial killer on the loose?

So I'm very curious to see how this progresses.

Yep.

And in the checkbox of where we feel about Evelyn and Evelyn's involvement in anything criminal other than being at a house and seemingly covering up this

crime.

So far, the police have said, well, they held her on vagrancy charges, which just as a little explainer, the vagrancy charges had been everything from sex work to being homeless to

loitering.

I mean, it was like a catch-all.

And I don't know if it's still like that now.

I know that vagrancy has been under fire.

That sort of, you cannot arrest somebody simply for vagrancy.

Is that right at this point?

I think the equivalent statute that I'm aware of out of California is, you know, this 647 PC, which has all sorts of those subdivisions like sex work, the drunken public.

You know, there's various subcategories under 647.

It sounds like this vagrancy statute up there in Canada.

It's a big catch-all is my understanding.

But they're holding her on these charges.

That's why they're, you know, then going in and looking through the attic.

They find the suitcase and they open it up.

And inside they find a baby.

Oh, that's not where I thought this was going.

I know.

So remember, I told you she had a series of kids.

There was a stillborn baby.

There was a girl who's clearly alive, the one that she said cut her face, and that's where all the blood came from.

This is Peter.

And when Peter left the hospital, which was this was just a year and a half to to two years ago, the year before she met John.

So John is not the father.

When she left the hospital with Peter, he was 10 days old and he was healthy.

She said that she took him to an adoption agency, and obviously she didn't.

Now, what the pathologist says, and I wish I had more details about this, what the pathologist said was they believed that Peter had been strangled and he had been encased in cement and then put into this suitcase.

And he had been up in the attic.

I'm assuming John didn't know about this for, you know, two years.

Sure.

So they're surprised, to say the least.

But it also speaks volumes about Evelyn.

Assuming Evelyn is the one that killed Peter, she's very willing to resort to homicidal violence to get rid of.

somebody that is cramping, what I'm going to assume is cramping her lifestyle.

Extrapolating that out to John, you know, and then the big question is, is that who else helped Evelyn?

Did anybody else help Evelyn?

We know Evelyn is involved in aspects of John's homicide.

She's the one that is getting that Packard, that car

from

this auto place and then returning that car, you know, so and that car has obviously been used to transport John's body to dispose of the remains.

And whether or not John is killed in that car or he's cut up in that car, who knows at this point?

So Evelyn is involved, but to what extent?

Is she the killer?

Did somebody else kill John and then Evelyn helped dispose of the body?

Maybe even helped with the dismemberment.

Right now, we don't have any information, but you throw Peter into the mix.

In all likelihood, Evelyn is the one who strangled this 10-day-old infant and then try to hide that body.

with the cement, but again, sloppy.

Why is that body still inside the residence, inside a suitcase?

There's so many better ways to go about disposing of that body than that process.

But nobody had found it.

True.

With the exception of, you know, of course, her being under suspicion for murdering her husband.

And then they go up there and start looking around.

And

I don't know how much.

her parents know.

I do want to go back to John because they've searched the house.

They find this body.

They're stunned by the discovery of this infant baby.

And then, of course, the bone fragments and the teeth of John.

So then they say, we need to get the hell over to Donald and Alexandra's house.

So Evelyn's parents.

Big search.

And this is what they find.

And maybe this will help you figure out the order of things.

Because right now I'm curious about the order of events.

They find a pair of John's shoes in the basement, which are bloodstained.

And there is also a large butcher knife and an axe, neither of which seem to have blood on them, you know, according to the media, but who knows.

They also find a.32 caliber revolver that a ballistic expert would later say could have caused the gunshot wounds.

Remember, we don't have casings or bullets or anything on his body.

Does that make sense?

Can they kind of eyeball that and say, well, this looks like this kind of a bullet could have grazed his body in this way.

So it was probably a 30, that doesn't seem like hard evidence to me.

No, I can't really see where they could draw any type of conclusion.

You know, of course, a larger caliber bullet bullet could potentially leave a larger grey's wound, but you're dealing with such an elastic surface in terms of the skin.

There's so many variables at play.

Unless there's something just significantly unusual that I can't think about, I think all they could say is that these appear consistent with grey's wounds from bullets.

And there's no way you can tie a gun or a caliber of weapon to that.

So I think they overstretched on that conclusion.

I mean, at least it just shows that Donald has a gun.

You know, it's there.

Yeah.

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So they also find, I thought you'd appreciate this, they also find a magazine called Famous Detective Stories.

I think this is different from the true detective trash stuff we talk about before, but still there is an article that I think has been

earmarked that's how to dispose of a corpse through incineration 101.

How to do it.

I don't want to blame these magazines.

I think that's sort of silly.

But at the same time, you know, we're not talking about crime porn here.

We're talking about a how-to on how to get rid of a body.

So it sounds like Donald was doing some research if we think that this is connected.

For sure.

You know, we see this today.

There's reasons why suspects' computers and phones and tablets are confiscated during an investigation and then searched underneath a warrant to see, well, what are they looking at and what are they researching leading up to the, you know, the timeframe of a crime being committed?

And oftentimes, as I mentioned before, you know, most of these offenders have never killed before.

And so now they're trying to find information on how to do it.

And it's just, you know,

here we're talking 1946.

You've got the paper magazine that has an article that just happens to fit with how John's part of John's body was disposed of.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, they go back also and continue to do searching of where the torso was found because they're hoping to find more information about whomever this person is who dumped the torso in the rural area.

And they find a striped shirt that's found in the woods, and it's identified as the one that John was last seen wearing.

The shirt was completely buttoned up as it would have been when it was worn, and both arms of the shirt were cut off, and the shirt was stained with blood.

I can't even picture what that means.

So what happened that you can tell so far?

You know, the shoes, there's blood, there's a butcher knife at Donald's house, at her parents' house.

And then the incineration, it sounds like, happened at their house, at Evelyn and John's house, right?

Yeah.

Well, and it appears that John is killed.

And in all likelihood, like I talked about before, probably a gunshot wound to the head.

And that can't be proven because his head is gone and presumably incinerated.

But it does not appear that whoever is cutting up John is taking the time to take the clothes off.

You know, they're literally just cutting his arms off, you know, sleeves and all.

Now, the pathologist should be able to determine from the cut ends of the, let's say, the humerus on both arms, you know, what type of tool was used.

Was a saw used, you know, based on the tool marks that are present in the end of the bone?

Or is it more consistent with the axe?

And that's not necessarily an easy thing.

You know, you have to take multiple swings with the axe in order to be able to hack through the, say, the upper arm.

And there's a good chance you're going to miss and you're probably going to hit part of the torso.

Doesn't sound like you have any information in terms of pathologists rendering an opinion on the type of tool marks present on the bone ends.

No, no.

And, you know, like they said, that the axe and the other weapon that they found, it didn't appear to have blood.

I'm sure it did.

They just couldn't see it.

Yeah, so I mean, maybe not.

I don't know.

Well, it all depends on how well the tool has been cleaned, how bloody it got in the first place.

You are dealing with a dead body.

So now

the heart is not pumping.

You hack through these long bones and the arms and the legs.

I mean, there is going to be blood that seeps out, but it's not gushing out because there's no pump present.

The heart is done.

So, you know, it's possible that, let's say, if this axe or this butcher knife had been used, you know, blood staining likely would be present, but it may not be present where now it's seeping down in between the blade and the handle and all that.

They just cleaned it up.

Okay.

Well, so far, this seems pretty damning.

Is this circumstantial?

I mean, how would you label this case so far against you've got Donald and you've got Evelyn, we don't know anything about Bill just yet.

And then we don't know about the mom, Alexandra.

Well, there's physical evidence.

I will tell you from a physical evidence standpoint, it is a strong case that these individuals are involved.

What you don't have is who's doing what, right?

And so this is where interviewing, and it sounds like if you've got parts of the crime scene at Donald's house and parts at Evelyn's house, it sounds like, well, we have multiple people involved.

And, you know, you think father-daughter may be very loyal to each other?

Maybe not.

You know, you have to kind of play one against the other in terms of what their statements are and the jeopardy each one is subjected to.

But then is there a third person?

And again, I go back to this

new lover of Evelyn's, this Bill.

Evelyn sounds like she's somebody who would be willing to seduce a man to get that man to commit a crime for her and then probably eliminate that man as a witness after, let's say, the homicide of John is done.

Let me tell you their theory first, just about the crime, and then I'll tell you about arrests.

So I think this is what we've been talking about.

The theory that the prosecutors say, once they've gathered all of this information, they say that John was murdered in the Packard, likely from a gunshot wound to the head, like you said.

But of course, the head has been destroyed, presumably in the fire.

It's theorized that he was dismembered at Donald's house, but the limbs were incinerated in Evelyn's furnace.

And then John's torso was dumped in the woods, probably because it was too, it was actually too big to fit into the furnace.

So I think they went, oh shit, we got to put it somewhere.

So they dumped it, you know, in this place.

That all makes sense to you, I'm assuming.

Ryzen, anything you disagree with in the prosecutor's case?

No, that makes sense.

I think it's interesting that they didn't bother to further cut up the torso to incinerate it.

It's possible that once they kind of got to the point where they did with the dismemberment of John, they're going, oh, this, this is unpleasant.

You know,

we just, we're not going to bother with the rest of the body.

Let's just go dump it.

You know, because it takes a certain, what do you want to say, disposition, you know, to hack up a body and do it without possibly having to go throw up or going, oh, I wasn't expecting this.

I think they abandoned the body disposal process early, considering that Donald had a magazine article on how to dispose of a body through incineration.

So it seems like they didn't carry out the plan as far as they could have in terms of getting rid of the body through incineration.

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We've got some arrests.

So remember, they were holding Evelyn on vagrancy charges, really vague vagrancy charges, which to me, it sounded like because she doesn't have a full-time job, maybe, you know, I mean, stealing money, it was just a way for her to, for a way for them to keep a hold of her for a little bit.

Yep.

Okay, so they have brought charges for John's murder murder against Evelyn and Donald and the mom, Alexandra, who they think was involved also, and Bill, who is Evelyn's, I mean, I think boyfriend is a pretty loose term for what he probably was.

I think you're right.

I think he was probably a little bit of a patsy.

So Evelyn starts turning on people, which doesn't surprise me.

She implicates Bill in the murders of John and this baby.

I will not drag this out.

She didn't even know Bill when she was pregnant.

I I was going to say.

With Peter.

I mean, what is she thinking?

So she's saying he strangled my kid and it was easily proven, you know, that this was not the case.

So I don't know if she's just throwing, she's not smart.

She's throwing stuff out, but she is trying to pin this on everybody but herself.

Sure.

You know, and again, we've, we've just seen this lack of awareness and knowledge and how the crime scene is handled, how sloppy it is.

And now her statements are sloppy in many ways.

You know, this is something that those investigators would be able to easily see through.

And when she's making those types of statements, which are obvious lies,

you know, those are just like ding, ding, ding, you know, both for the investigators going, okay.

you know, we're on the right track, and for the prosecutors who will put that information in front of a jury.

You know, so, and in part, it may just be, you know, she's, what, 25 years old.

In all likelihood, you know, this homicide of John is

much more complicated than what she thought it was going to be.

You know, it's a 10-day-old infant.

She came up with the excuse of, well, the reason this infant is not, Peter is not around anymore is because I gave him up for adoption, when in reality, he's encased in cement in a suitcase in her attic.

Well, Evelyn and Bill are charged with the murder of Peter.

And, you know, Bill will get out of that once they realize the timeline a little bit.

So Donald and his wife are both charged additionally with John's murder.

And Donald is on top of that charged with stealing money from the transport agency that he worked for.

So this becomes a huge media sensation, as you can imagine.

Front page news all across the country.

Lots of people show up trying to grab a seat and they want to gawk at someone they describe in the newspapers in the 40s as a femme fatale, which that really pisses me off.

It's so dismissive.

But they, of course, have photos of her sort of like lounging in this chair.

She is an attractive woman.

She's very hip-looking.

This sets up for this media circus because her sex life comes out all over this trial.

And this is the slut shaming that I was talking about and how it plays into the trial because there is, for me, the Evelyn who very clearly was involved in two murders.

But then there is also the Evelyn who, you know, when they put her on trial, it is just like you're a whore, and you did this because you're a whore.

So it's hard to reconcile the two together.

And so I want to talk about that's where we're heading next: is getting a fair trial.

In terms of the slut-shaming aspect of Evelyn, I guess I would need to know: okay, what is being attributed to how the media is portraying her?

And then what is, how is she being portrayed in court?

You know, because in some aspects, her relationships do play into the people, the prosecutors

laying the groundwork for motive, if you will.

But is it completely needed?

You know, I think it all depends on how the prosecutors are laying their case out.

Well, I wasn't going to tell you this until a little bit later, but I'm going to read you this a little bit from the trial right now, just to give you an idea of what it was like.

She's on the stand.

Now, this is a preliminary hearing, but but she also testified at her trial.

She is on the stand and the prosecutor says, tell the court how many men you've had sexual intercourse with.

And she says, maybe 150.

Now, I don't know if she's gigging him or if that's accurate.

Either way, that's her truth.

I want you, this is the lawyer, I want you to name these men for the court right now.

Who are they?

She says, well, his son, for one, she's looking at the judge.

The lawyer says, were you indicating his honor?

And she says, yes, the judge's son.

The judge immediately struck the testimony from the record and issued a restraining order on the publication of the names of these 150 men that she's talking about.

That's where this trial was going.

And I'm not saying that, you know, some parts of this are probably going to be applicable, but this was pretty blatantly framed around her being this temptress.

So, boy, I mean, I don't want to ever defend Evelyn, but this is sort of a case where I went, this is gross.

It felt so gross reading the transcripts, you know.

Well, that's that's extending out past what I would say, you know, the nexus of the crime is.

Yeah.

You know, I think her coming out and admitting that she ended up having sex with a man within a few days of being married, you know, really establishing how she maintained a lifestyle involving multiple men outside of her relationship with John kind of establishes this dynamic where people would go, okay, I can see where she really never loved or cared for John.

You know, so I can see utilizing the relationship surrounding the crime to underscore sort of the dynamic between Evelyn and John, but not bringing in her entire love life from five years before.

You know, that doesn't, that doesn't equate.

That sounds prejudicial.

Let's switch over to another woman who takes center stage here, and that's Evelyn's mother.

Who flips on her?

So the men in this family seem sort of strangely loyal or in this story.

The women are not.

Alexandra flips on Evelyn.

She agrees to testify for the prosecutor in exchange for legal immunity.

Okay.

So remember, they kind of took a net and arrested everybody and then said, let's sort it out.

She does not say too much, but she does say that even though Evelyn says, yeah, I got the Packard, but I was with my parents the whole time, she said there was a long time when she was not around on March 6th.

And she said that before the torso was discovered, but after John had been, you know, declared missing, that Evelyn had said, John's dead and you better keep your mouth shut about it.

And that's what she said to her mother.

Boy, this family.

So this is her mom testifying.

This is specifically her trial.

So she's not testifying against her own husband yet, but this is the way this is going.

Are you surprised by that?

No.

You know, I think it really comes down to the family dynamics because, you know, when we started talking about Evelyn and her upbringing and how it sounded like she had an abusive childhood with Donald and Alexandra, I kind of wonder what the relationship between Donald and Alexandra was like.

Maybe he's abusive to her.

Obviously, you know, with mom flipping at this point, it's self-preservation, and her self-preservation is superseding any mother-daughter feelings that she has with Evelyn.

Well, and it sounds like I don't know how much knowledge Alexandra had, but enough to be able to say, well,

I'm not going to risk my own skin for my daughter.

Evelyn's not particularly helping herself.

She keeps changing her story a lot.

Time magazine reported on it.

And they said that at some point, she said a gang gang from another town must have killed him.

She said that also the gang was hired by Bill, the boyfriend, and that actually Bill did the killing, but her father, Donald, was the one who strongharmed him into it.

And, you know, Donald hated John, so who else, you know, would have been responsible for this?

So the one thing she does admit to is she says, you know, I did drive that Packer to the location where we dumped the torso.

So she's admitting to be, I guess, would it be an accessory?

Is that what she's admitting to if she's kind of covering it up?

Yeah, you know, she's minimizing her role.

That's what it sounds like.

You know,

all these statements that seem to conflict about, you know, who actually is doing what, you know, it's pointing fingers at the other players and not her, right?

She's saying, well, I only did this.

Everybody else did, you know, the really bad stuff.

And And she's kind of taking a shotgun approach with her statements.

She's conflicting herself multiple times.

You know, this just all speaks to she's making things up on the fly with hope something sticks.

Yeah, she really is and not being very smart about it.

So, you know, a lot of this case covers the evidence, and we've talked about there's physical evidence, there's circumstantial evidence, but we do talk a lot about the slut shaming that happens.

There is a lot about her black book.

And the black book has all of these very important men who she's supposedly slept with.

You know, that's why there's a huge media circus around this is people want to hear those names.

And I think that the attorneys on both sides are just constantly trying to keep the names out because these are very important men in the area at the time.

So as we move forward, do you think of these people?

So we've got Alexandra, who I guess it doesn't matter, she has gotten immunity, so she's not going to be held or she won't be convicted no matter what.

But with Evelyn and Donald and Bill, which we don't know very much about, these three people, who is the strongest case against?

Do you think it's Evelyn?

I mean, if we're looking at first-degree murder, obviously this was planned kind of thing.

It seems like you have equivalent cases against both Donald and Evelyn.

And a lot of that has to do with, you know, you have the physical evidence found at Donald's place.

He also, the gun, which you can't conclude is a murder weapon, but appears that he had the ability, or Evelyn did, at Donald's place to shoot John.

And maybe Bill did.

You know, I don't know how he's factoring into this at this point.

But then you also have all the evidence at Evelyn's place.

You know, and I think it really just comes back down to, well, it doesn't sound like Donald can alibi himself and say, I wasn't there.

Of course, my daughter can go into my basement, you know, and spend time down there in terms of hacking up John.

But as I mentioned earlier in this story is, well, who benefits from this homicide?

And the reality is, is Donald probably.

financially benefits the most because he's preserving his criminal operation through the railway and embezzling $2 million.

And with the level of income that Evelyn seems to possess without actually having a job to point to as being the source of the income, suggests that she's getting the pass-through money from her father.

So she's financially benefiting.

And John became sort of a problem and he was eliminated.

So

I think you have equal cases against both Evelyn and Donald.

I don't know about Bill.

Yeah.

Right now, we're just going to deal with Evelyn because this is her trial and whatever the jury heard was enough to convict her of his murder.

There's still more to this story, but she is given the death penalty, which is something for a woman in 1946.

In Canada, I was pretty surprised.

Yeah, I'm surprised.

Okay.

So before we talk about what happens after that, let me kind of clean up everybody else.

Bill is released of all charges for everything.

He wasn't dating her or sleeping with her when Peter was born.

They've proven that.

And there's zero evidence that he was involved at all with John's murder.

Now, he might have been, but they don't have enough evidence.

And so ultimately, they just let him go.

I'm assuming you agree with that.

I mean, I think we just think there's what is there.

He might have done something, but there is nothing that says other than her word that he did anything.

Yeah, you know, it doesn't sound like they have any type of case against Bill.

And, you know, I don't know if he had any role in it, but I also think that potentially Evelyn and Donald being arrested possibly saved Bill's life.

I agree.

I mean, he could have been, well, he could have been a Patsy.

They could have killed him.

I mean, we don't know.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, they're very dangerous people.

Donald, I don't agree with this.

He's found guilty of being an accessory to John's murder.

Five years.

He's given five years plus another five years for robbing, you know, the transport agency.

And he's released from prison in 1951.

I mean he is out.

I'm surprised at that.

I'm a little bit too and I don't know it doesn't sound like Alexandra, his wife testified against him.

It sounds like they just didn't have enough evidence and maybe I don't know.

I mean between the witnesses saying she had the car, they're putting her with that car.

She's admitting she drove the car.

And I think Donald probably just said, listen, just because this stuff is at my place doesn't mean I had any involvement.

And they couldn't prove anything.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, his daughter has access to his house.

Likewise, he and his wife have access to her house.

So.

And I think that that's when in assessing Donald, it really does come down to what could they prove in terms of where he was at at the time John went missing, was likely killed.

What kind of freedom of movement does Evelyn have into and out of John's house?

So, you know, on that front, I can kind of see, yeah, maybe they don't have as strong of a case against Donald.

I just go back to who benefited the most from John's homicide.

And it really is Donald.

Well, listen to the rest of this.

She is given the death penalty, but right after her sentencing, she gets mystery money together.

It's not her dad.

I don't know where she's getting this money from, but she hires a well-known attorney.

I think she has

probably multiple wealthy men that based on past relationships or concern that she might divulge that they were, you know, having a sexual affair with her or whatever, that they're now saying, okay, we'll give you money in order to keep your mouth shut about our relationship together.

Yeah.

So she hires a guy named John Robinette.

He appeals her conviction, of course.

He cites 25 procedural issues in her case.

He says many of the statements used against Evelyn in court were improperly obtained by police.

He says that they did not adequately caution her after charging her with murder.

Remember, they held her on vagrancy charges where they cautioned her.

So they don't have Miranda warnings in Canada, but they have something very similar.

And they did it for vagrancy, apparently, but not for the murder charges.

And I would not be telling you about appeals points if it did not work and it worked.

Yeah, on my other podcast, we interviewed a Canadian law enforcement officer and they have a, at least during the course of his career, which is more recent than 1946, they definitely have a very, very similar requirement to what we know as Miranda here in the United States.

And I can't remember what he called it.

And so I can see where Evelyn is taken into custody.

And they basically let her know her rights now that she's in custody.

And then she

never leaves custody and is now,

in essence, arrested and charged with murder.

Because of her custodial status, at least here

in the United States, you know, that's where she needs to be told what her rights are.

In addition, there's also a scenario where because she's in custody and she's represented by an attorney, then law enforcement interviewing her for more charges can sometimes get a little dicey.

And I know, you know, because currently there's been some people I'd like to go in and talk to who have been convicted and possibly were involved in other crimes.

But the DAs involved in the conviction are saying don't.

Not while he's represented and he's got an appeal going on, right?

And

this is not Joe DiAngelo, Golden State killer.

It's another guy, you know, but now her defense attorney is basically, you know, probably doing a pretty decent job in terms of going, look at, you know, law enforcement, the prosecutor's side, whatever they're called up there, you know, they, they misstepped.

Yep.

And this is a successful argument.

And Evelyn is retried.

And this time,

her attorney, so she keeps this attorney, Robinette, emphasizes the possibility that Donald, the dad, not Evelyn, killed John.

And he is very convincing that just like what you said, who really had the motive here?

Who had threatened John in the past?

Who was going to be exposed and arrested and fired and publicly humiliated and all of that stuff when John was going to come out and report this?

And John had already gone to the police.

So Robinette says all of this.

And it worked.

And she is found not guilty of murdering her husband in this second trial.

She pleads guilty to being an accessory after the fact,

but she is only then sentenced to four years in prison.

And it's not over yet, but I will say, I mean, boy, when you have a good attorney, they can work wonders.

And he knew exactly where to go with this.

And I don't agree with this either.

I don't necessarily agree with the outcome, but I think I agree with the strategy.

Yeah.

Because all All Robinette has to do for Evelyn's case is create reasonable doubt.

At least that would be the term here in the United States.

And imagine it's a similar criteria, you know, for the Canadian court process.

And that's what he could do.

Because, you know, particularly in terms of the physical evidence side, I'm trying to think of, is there anything,

there would be things that I'd be looking for, let's say during the crime scene investigation that would support, let's say, Evelyn's presence, you know, at the time of the homicide, you know, the gunshot.

There might be something as as an example, and this is just kind of fabricating based on the circumstances, the type of evidence I'd be looking for.

If John were truly shot in the head and possibly shot in the head multiple times, the shooter potentially could have backspatter

from the entry wounds of the gunshots.

in which blood and brain matter can spatter back onto the gun, as well as the shooter's hand, the sleeves, low down on the pants leg.

You could have shattered hair if it's a close enough shot to the head where that shattered hair would end up depositing on the shooter.

So, of course, trying to collect, let's say, Evelyn's clothing and Donald's clothing in this day and age, that would be a form of evidence to try to determine, well, who actually was the shooter.

Now, John could have been shot from a distance, and you don't have any of that backspatter.

coming back onto the shooter, you know, and then now you have to rely on the interviews and statements and finger pointing as to, well, who really is the shooter in this case but if he shot from a distance wouldn't that have done damage to the packard which the owner didn't mention any kind of damage except hey where's my cover to this seat wouldn't there a bullet have gone somewhere right so when when i say a distant you know with a 32 caliber revolver the the backspatter is going to be relatively minimal.

So you're talking about a very close range shot.

And I'm just going to throw out like, you know, within two feet.

And unless there's actual shooting, we would do what's called distance determinations, but you'd also try to get a sense for the power of this, this particular handgun and this particular ammo.

Of course, the more powerful the weapon, the more gases that are discharged from the weapon, let's say like a.357 Magnum, there's a greater likelihood of having more blood brain matter coming back either as backspatter or from the rupture of the skull itself.

And now you see the shooter get a fair amount of biological evidence on them.

32 caliber is not a very powerful weapon, but it's something that when I say a distance, I'm talking, yeah, like the shooter's actually within the vehicle.

That's where John is shot.

Got it.

But not up close.

It sounds like John's settled.

So, you know, you've got Donald, who has been the scapegoat for Robinette.

And as an accessory, she has been given four years in prison.

The prosecutors are pissed off.

And so she goes on trial for murdering her infant son.

Robinette does not have anything clever except to say, we've got to get her out of the death penalty because they were going to go for the death penalty here.

And he could not figure out a way to say somebody else did it.

It's clear she did it.

So he said, because of her trauma and abuse at the hands of her parents as a child, she had been emotionally stunted.

She didn't understand that there were consequences for her actions.

And the jury buys it and she is found guilty of manslaughter.

And she's given a life sentence, right?

So she's spared the death penalty.

She's supposed to be spending life in prison, but I think you probably know I'm heading down a road where she does not spend life in prison for this.

So now she's been implicated and involved in two murders.

I guess I, you know, I just don't know what criteria up in Canada is used to justify the death penalty.

I'm really struggling to see

the death of the infant's son, how

there would be an argument for first-degree murder with special circumstances.

If, in fact, Peter was strangled, that shows intent.

Does this come down to Peter is crying, Evelyn is just getting so frustrated with this baby crying that she just acts in sort of in the heat of the moment and strangles Peter.

This would be more akin to like a second-degree murder type of scenario in California.

Manslaughter.

I don't know.

I'm not having too much issue with what Evelyn is ultimately convicted of.

I'm surprised that if it's a manslaughter of this 10-day-old infant, that that would be a life sentence.

Right.

I don't know why that was a a sentence.

I will tell you, she does not serve life.

She only serves around 11 years total.

In 1958, she's paroled.

She's only 38 years old.

She gets a new identity and totally falls off the radar.

She's fully pardoned in 1985, according to this newspaper.

I mean, I have no idea.

This is what it says.

Her government file remains sealed after she was granted a royal pejorative, I guess.

Is that what I would say?

Yeah, I'd

have to rely on the attorneys in the know to describe what that means.

Yeah, I would say, okay, her government file remains sealed after she was granted a pardon in 85, a special pardon that is awarded in exceptional cases of substantial injustice or undue hardship, which would not seem to apply in Evelyn Dick's case, but many believe she had friends in high places who helped her get this pardon as a wider strategy to muzzle stories about the people she was having sex with.

Yeah.

So we're back to the little black book.

You know, this is when she's now 65 and she gets this full pardon where her case is basically, you know, sealed.

So nobody knows anything about it.

I mean, this is decades later.

I mean, gosh.

That's what it sounds like to me, you know, because it seems like, you know, the crisis.

Well, she was actually acquitted of John's homicide, right?

Or of his murder.

She was given four years as an accessory.

Accessory murder.

Okay.

And then, and then

for Peter's murder.

Right.

Yeah.

Again,

it's hard for me to figure out the life sentence, which seems like it might be excessive, just depending upon

what kind of case the prosecutors laid out.

But yeah, the black book, the people in the black book, sounds like she had

at least one.

deep-pocketed person that was supporting her to be able to hire the fancy attorney.

There may be multiple deep-pocketed people who, of course, over time, you know, probably continue to have influence.

And at any point, if Evelyn ever felt that she had been betrayed by any of them, she could have divulged her secrets.

And so

they're just trying to protect their asses, would be my guess.

Yeah.

There were, of course, rumors of where she went.

People have been trying to figure out where she went, who she became afterwards.

Reporters and biographers, they said some people thought she moved to Winnipeg under the name Betty.

Other people thought she married a wealthy man and left town.

That actually seems on brand.

And others insist she stayed somewhere in Ontario.

I don't really care what she did after she got out of prison.

What I care about is a statement that you made long, long ago, which was when we found out that Peter had been strangled and then encased in cement and put into

a suitcase.

This baby, this newborn baby, she did that and she participated somehow in the murder of her husband.

This is someone who is capable of removing an obstacle that is stopping her from living the life she wants to live.

And that makes me concerned for whomever she was, whomever she encountered after she left the life of Evelyn Dick.

And that's that.

We don't know if she killed other people because we don't know who she is.

Yeah, she's a dangerous woman she was 38 when she gets out yeah she would be 104 last year i mean i would i would think not but i mean listen she lived to at least 65 because she got a uh an official pardon but nobody knew where she was when that happened yeah i because i'm just thinking okay how would i figure out who you know who she became and you know one way is she's still a childbearing age at age 38 when she gets out does she have any children

Have they had any children?

Are they up in the genealogy databases?

Would we be able to triangulate back and identify Evelyn via that means?

If there was a reason,

a justifiable reason to track her down, that's an avenue to pursue.

Of course, there's the investigative side, but I think just through genetics, just through genealogy, there's a way to identify what ended up happening to Evelyn.

Well, it's possible that her daughter, Heather, is still alive because she was born in 41, but we don't know what happened to Heather.

And I don't know if there would be a reason.

It's interesting to hear that if there needed to be a reason, there are possibilities.

And Heather might have had children, you know?

Yep, most certainly.

And, you know, there is a source that could be used for genealogy.

And you could potentially identify Evelyn using DNA.

It's interesting to bring up things like the slut slut shaming and finger pointing and the black books and stuff like that.

And normally, for me, I feel like it's focusing on the victims and the prosecutor or the media or the perpetrator, the offenders being the ones who are doing the slut shaming, who are, you know, re-traumatizing survivors, re-victimizing victims, all of that.

But to have the offender, who clearly is an offender, for me to say, God, I don't like the way this trial is going.

I mean, I know ultimately you have to go down different roads, but this was a pretty icky road for the prosecutors at some points when you go above and beyond explaining somebody's sex life.

I think that having that on display with a very messy case involving a family and threats and everything.

Nobody's perfect in this story.

We almost never have perfect people, Paul.

Well, you know, crime is messy, right?

Crime is messy.

No,

kind of along those lines, you know, this is where, you know, there's reasons why prior cases, prior behaviors by the defendant don't get admitted into court because they're overly prejudicial.

This is where the judge has to, you know, step in, and the defense attorneys need to object.

So, you know, there is attempts at protection from what ended up happening to Evelyn in terms of her sexual relationships with all these men.

A lot of, at least the way you're telling it to me, doesn't seem to have any bearing on the crime itself.

It really is just prejudicial.

And of course, that also could potentially influence jury selection.

You know, if the media is portraying this, you know, after prelim and now they have to select a jury and they've seen the headlines about

this woman and her relationships, how is that going to impact a fair trial?

So I think I definitely agree with you.

It appears that Evelyn, as the defendant,

her right to a fair trial was potentially violated.

And ultimately, she ended up getting an attorney that was able to get her conviction overturned.

And led a very, very, very dangerous woman out into the world to do God knows what.

Hopefully, just live a quiet life and be done with it.

But I somehow doubt it.

I don't know.

Next week, let's hope hope we have a less dangerous woman.

If they are the offender, I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see.

That's unlikely.

Female offenders are some of the most dangerous I have found.

Yeah, they're the most conniving for sure.

Paul holes.

Okay.

I will see you next week.

Rest up.

All right.

We'll do.

Take care.

Thanks.

This has been an exactly right production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emorosi.

Research by Maren McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

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Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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