Evelyn Dick

The murder trials of Evelyn Dick (born October 13, 1920) remain the most sensationalized events in Canadian crime history.

Dick was born in Beamsville, Ontario. She was arrested for murder after local children in Hamilton, Ontario found the torso of her missing estranged husband, John Dick. His head and limbs had been sawn from his body and evidence that they had been burned in the furnace of her home later surfaced.

A well known school yard song, (with a doube entendre) at the time went as follows:

You cut off his legs...

You cut off his arms...

You cut off his head...

How could you Mrs Dick?

How could you Mrs Dick?

The Forgotten Rebels used these lyrics for the song Evelyn Dick on their (Untitled) album in 1989 [1].

She was first convicted of the murder in 1946 and sentenced to hang. Lawyer J.J. Robinette, however, appealed her case and won an eventual acquittal.

In the meantime, however, a partly mummified body of a baby boy was found in her attic, encased in cement in an old suitcase. She was tried again for murder in 1947 and sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in 1958 after serving eleven years in Kingston Prison for Women, and eventually disappeared from public.

A feature film was released in 2002 that suggests Evelyn protected her parents, who were also viable suspects in the murder of her baby and husband, and that she was sexually abused by her father and exploited by both parents (especially by her mother) to provide them a higher standing and income.

The case was also the subject of the 2005 film noir musical, Black Widow.

See also

• J.J. Sullivan

External links

• Evelyn Dick - The 'Torso' Murder

References

• Alex Chapple (Director), Dennis Foon, Marjorie Freeman Campbell (book) (2002). Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story (Film). Canada: Shaftesbury Films Inc.. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274981/.