Missing Pieces PT 1

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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 Holes, 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, Kate, how are you doing?

I'm doing really well, but more importantly, how is Cora doing?

Because we haven't had a Cora update in a really long time.

What's going on with your dog?

Actually, you know, Cora's doing really well.

She, of course, is getting older.

She's going to be turning 12 this Easter

and,

you know, slowing down quite a bit.

But, you know, she's actually had quite a bit of quality of life improvement lately.

You know, I had posted maybe four months ago on Instagram a picture of Cora down in 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 15 steps.

It's not a short, short thing for her at all.

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, 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 step.

And that in part maybe because it's, you know, we've predominantly 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 Corafront.

So, you know, for a 90-pound yellow lab, you know, she's not a small lab.

You know, she's a big lab.

And,

you know, she's, you know, getting up there 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 improving as a result of

the social media suggestions that I got.

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 so 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, 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,

which I think is great.

Very cool.

So, you know, I really, I love getting suggestions like that.

And so I, especially something that's going to 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 12 almost?

You 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 to have surgery.

You know, traumatic for my wife, who was with her at the time,

for sure.

But Cora didn't seem to care, and she still tried to take off after a bear.

And when bears come into our yard, she's barking at them.

You know, so that

said, yeah, don't think that she's going to be scared of bears.

You know, she's still going to go after them, which is just, it's so weird.

We have so many deer, bunny rabbits, turkeys, you name it.

Cora just ignores them.

But if it's a bear, you know, she turns into almost a vicious dog.

Just sheer luck.

Yeah.

She's like,

she's after the big prey.

That's what she's looking for, I think, is the big prey.

That's the whole point of this.

That's kind of a way to put it, I guess.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I'm glad we had a Cora 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.

As of now, yeah.

You know, it's right here to my right.

I can almost touch it.

And yeah, we can talk fish some other time.

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 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.

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.

Yep, yep.

Okay, let's go ahead and set the scene.

We are in 1946 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, I've been to Montreal, and that's it for Canada.

But I loved all three of those cities.

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 the first time I've ever experienced sort of the...

the Canadian countryside, you know, and I always enjoy driving and just looking around.

So that was really cool, but don't have much experience at all up in Canada.

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 hear about it in a little bit.

Okay, let's get back to Canada.

So 1946, Ontario.

We're in Hamilton, which is about 40 miles southwest of Toronto, 55 miles northwest of Buffalo, New York.

I always forget how close parts of New York and Canada are.

In Hamilton, the population is at about 180,000 in the mid-1940s.

Oh, it's a pretty big place then.

I have very little reference for Canada as far as the size of cities, but that did seem like a pretty good size for in the 1940s.

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 16th, there's a group of kids that are hiking along a trail.

This is near an area called Albion Falls, and they stumble upon a male torso.

So, this is probably my naivete 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, the chest, and the 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, marin said well pelvis is included with that traumatizing scene for these kids 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 uh here you've got somebody sounds like they're trying to remove the body parts that could lead to identification.

The head, the hands.

So that's interesting.

They're leaving on shorts and an undershirt.

I don't know why I found that weird and surprising, but I did.

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?

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 you have pictures?

No, I don't have you'd love to have pictures of the headless lumbnail stories.

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 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 the killer or somebody was driving along this road and just tossed the torso out.

It's not buried.

It's not really hidden.

It's just sort of dumped.

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 steep embankment going off of the far side of the road from where the photographer is standing and fairly significant a number of trees and bushes with no leaves on them so it's obviously now fall winter time 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 uh you know down this embankment as well as you know this car is moving and the torso is just kind of pushed out.

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, you know, this looks like a relatively straightforward body dump location.

It's a location in which once the torso is 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.

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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 46.

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?

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 hands have been cut off, and then the body was weighed down in the Sacramento River Delta, but it ended up bobbing.

So 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 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, 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.

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 it.

And she had this torso wrapped up in this package and carried it on a train.

And people thought it was so odd.

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 a 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, you know, not not be able to have corroborating details between who we find out the victim is versus this torso, I don't think they did a great job.

But let me, let me tell you a couple 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 10 days.

And as I said, they thought that it was tossed out of a moving car before 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.

There are superficial wounds, but somebody was shooting at this guy.

So no casings, 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 tushy, right?

I know that's not the technical term, but if they're saying posterior.

Yeah, it's the backside.

I mean, it could be the buttocks, it could be the back.

Okay.

But yeah, obviously there's some sort of mass, you know, cyst-like mass on the back of this torso.

Also, something I really know nothing about, which is a undescended testicle.

What does that mean?

I can see you smiling.

Is this really something you can use in anything helpful in an investigation?

You know, potentially, because when males are developing, the testes, of course, develop internally.

And then as this

male develops, the testes descend down into the scrotal sac.

And you can have boys born with undescended testicles or one undescended testicle, as 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 of size, height, weight, or whatever, it's like, well, also the undescended testes.

You know, that could be something that you go, okay, well, this is like, this torso is matching up with the description of this missing person.

And it may be something that could be used,

you know, in 1946, put in the newspapers.

It's a little bit personal, but you know, if you're trying to figure out who this guy is, that's a feature.

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They finally put it together who the torso is, and he is a 39-year-old man.

His name is John Dick, and he came from Russia to Canada about 20 20 years earlier in the 1920s.

And he is missing.

He's been declared missing for around two weeks, 10 days, which is how long the medical examiner thought 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 6, 1946, so 10 days earlier, but we don't really know where.

The reports have varied.

Some say that he was at his cousin's house where he was living at the time, even though he's married.

Others say that he was eating a meal at the Windsor Hotel in Hamilton.

But the 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, no record seems to be a good citizen.

And now he has this torso and they don't have any other body parts so far and they don't have a conclusive cause of death.

How old did you say he was?

39.

So what did you think about that with the undescended testicle?

Yeah, so who reported him missing?

Sounds like his wife.

So 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?

Yeah.

And if she 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.

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 who 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 that they can identify that would be problematic.

Evelyn Dick is problematic as a suspect and as a witness.

And I will also say that this is going to be a story involves slut shaming, 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 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.

You mentioned that John was living with his cousin at the time he goes missing and not with Evelyn.

So it sounds like he's estranged in the marriage, even though they, I mean, literally been married only six months.

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.

So he's living with a cousin right now because they are having almost immediate problems in their marriage.

Absolutely.

Okay, so they obviously, after

figuring out this torso is John, then they interview Evelyn.

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 framed as a social light in the 1940s and a social light, Paul, because she has dated really powerful people in this area, in this part of Canada.

Powerful men.

So that immediately puts her on there, 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.

No, and when you say powerful men, I'm assuming politically and/or financially powerful.

Yep, business, politics, you name it.

Okay.

So the facts are right now, John is dead, 15 years older.

So her husband's 15 years older, and he is dead.

She is upset.

She claims to know nothing about this.

But they are now really quickly unraveling who Evelyn Dick is, and the police don't like it in Canada, which is fairly conservative.

Okay, so Evelyn is roughly 24 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?

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.

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.

Yep.

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's going on there.

You are a brilliant man, Paul Holes.

Because yes, yes, yes, there's all sorts of intersections of him getting involved in some things he shouldn't be, but that also involve Evelyn.

So let me, I'm so cryptic.

Everything I've, I feel like the last five minutes.

You always are.

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 25 and he is 39.

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, they moved from Beamsville, Ontario to Hamilton.

And Donald also drove streetcars.

The dad, her dad drove streetcars 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 sense so far?

Yeah, so it's like Donald, Evelyn's father, is the one that potentially introduced John and Evelyn.

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 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 for hundreds of thousands of dollars

in 1946.

It's a lot of money by pilfering fare 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 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.

Well, I'm wondering if John and Evelyn benefited from Donald's theft of the railways.

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 20s.

And, you know, Evelyn grew into being an attractive woman, sometimes described as a socialite.

She is also, this is where we get sexists, boy,

sometimes she's described as a escort or a sex worker.

And it's mostly because, Paul, I mean, 1946, 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 a sex worker or an escort.

But, you know, that 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.

Yeah, well, if dad's stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1946 money, you know, that's a fair amount of wealth 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, you know, something to that effect?

He's estranged 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.

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 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 20s.

Now you can see in 1946 Canada why when the police start learning about all of this stuff, I mean, this is, I know it's 180,000 people, but still, it wouldn't have taken long 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, they're all intertwined.

What do we know so far?

With this type of victimology with John, with what you have said so far, you know, 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 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 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 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 it sounds like this family is involved with on a criminal level.

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 1942, she was 21 and she gave birth to a daughter named Heather.

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 10 days old.

So all of this is to say, you know, I had mentioned that before, this would be something that her parents 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 will eventually be the slut-shaming part of this it's all 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, different, you know, fathers.

Let's see.

Now let's get to when she marries John.

It's presumably through her father's work, as I said, with the transportation, with the railway agency.

They meet in summer of 1945.

He is killed in early March of 1946.

Woo, talk about whirlwind.

So they meet in the summer of 45.

First lie.

She says to John that she was widowed after her husband was killed at war.

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 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 whirlwind.

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 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.

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 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 the one that has to be making the decision to marry John.

And so I wonder, considering who else she has been in relationships 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 seems odd considering everything surrounding Evelyn during the years leading up to the marriage.

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, Ka Ching, I found a woman who has more money than I do, dad's money.

You know, I don't know what he was thinking, but that was a pretty unusual arrangement, but she is the only one on the deed, which, because we're talking about a true crime case, is important.

No, absolutely.

It sounds from Evelyn's perspective, you know, anytime you have, let's say, 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, usually both people are on that deed.

The fact that in 1946, a woman is the sole 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 this property would be hers after the marriage.

You know, of course, different states have different community property aspects, you know, in divorce scenarios.

But, you know, right now,

we're talking Canada, right?

So I don't even know how that would work up there.

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, it was smart of her.

She's the one, excuse me.

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 the sex worker stuff just yet.

So now let's talk about some big 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 27 years old.

His name is Bill Bohazuk.

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 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 interest in 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.

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, it sounds like.

Well, 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 days after the marriage, which would generally be, you know, at least in this day and age, during the honeymoon.

period, right?

Yeah.

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, 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?

There's no evidence of that.

No evidence of that kind of financial gain.

We don't see that.

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.

I don't know what, but.

Potentially, yeah, because you could see where, you know, John is 39.

Do we know how long he was working for the railway, this HSR?

Was it?

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.

So, yes, he potentially has 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 potentially have been rewarded financially by getting involved with some of these other wealthier men than getting involved with John.

Yep.

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, I looked it up.

The amount was probably in the one and a half to $2 million 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 going to kill you.

I'll kill you.

So John goes to the police

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 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.

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,

you know, he is,

he's been benefiting from Donald's theft 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 directly from Donald.

And so on one hand, you know, you could see where he recognizes that he has leverage against Donald, you know, 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 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 kind of walked that line a little bit.

Yeah, as I said, I don't know what he exposed to the 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 1946.

We know now that the torso is John Dick, and they start wondering about alibis.

They 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 6th, that Evelyn had borrowed a 1938 Packard from the owner of a local auto garage, kind of a rental car agency, rudimentary one.

This was something that she did often.

So she borrows this car.

She returns it the next morning at 8 a.m.

So So this is when we start getting into evidence.

Yeah.

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 numerous blood stains, which are determined to be type O, which is John's type.

So, of course, they're doing blood typing, but nothing else.

Is O common or not common?

Or what is that?

No, it's very common.

Okay, so it's not helpful, really.

Yeah, basically, type A, type O are the two most common blood types, B, and then ultimately AB are rare.

So if you get type A, type O, 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 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.

Okay.

The 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.

This is so sloppy.

This is sloppy.

I mean, it really is.

If she's the one responsible, it is.

And it gets worse because she returns the Packard 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 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 you're right yeah no this uh very unsophisticated unorganized

on on one part you know when you start evaluating offenders and their actions you know you have to take into 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 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 were in this Packard probably matches items from John.

You know, to leave those behind and turn the car back to

this,

I forget what you called it, but this auto

body shop.

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, Evelyn becomes a prime suspect in John's homicide as a result of this.

Now, is she the sole person doing it or are there others?

I think that's the big question.

That is the big question.

So a couple of other key things.

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 5:30.

So, you know, I mean, she's trying to obviously get the car in the garage 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, now this is very damning.

Most damningly, I would say.

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 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?

Well, she most certainly could have pulled this off by herself.

Poorly, very poorly.

Poorly, very poorly, for sure.

No, but I think back to the injuries on John.

You've got two bullet grazes on his torso.

His head has been cut off.

The bullet grazes, the pathologist said, they weren't fatal.

And bullet grazes aren't.

John likely was shot in the head.

And then he was decapitated.

And with the teeth fragments in these ashes, it looks like in essence,

at least his head and potentially his arms and legs were essentially cremated

in this location.

Could Evelyn have shot John in the head?

Absolutely.

And now she's just having to manipulate his body, cremate the smaller 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 male.

You know, even with his arms and legs and head missing, you know, that torso is going to be weighing 100, 120, 140 pounds, if not more.

The authorities, the investigators say it looked 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.

And 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 number one.

Here's where we're going from here, 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 in 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 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 ask any questions.

But this woman has a person in a suitcase in in the attic of the home she shared with the husband who she clearly was involved in disposing of.

Yeah, Evelyn is a dangerous woman.

She seems to be, and we'll learn a lot more about that next week.

All right.

Well, you've got me on the edge once again.

I like to keep you there.

That's the point.

I'm going to keep you on the edge.

Okay, I'll see you next week, and I promise I'll have a conclusion for you.

All right.

Looking forward to it again.

Thanks, Lucky.

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 Emerosi.

Research by Marin McClashen, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

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