Evelyn Dick was born October 13, 1920 in Beamsville, Ontario to Donald and Alexandra MacLean. 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—as later evidence revealed—were disposed of in the furnace of her home at 32 Carrick Avenue.
She was defended in her first murder trial in 1946 by J.J. Sullivan, convicted 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 male infant was found in her attic, encased in cement in an old suitcase. The infant was identified as her son Peter David White. 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’s Prison for Women, with a new identity and job and disappeared from public view.
“Mother, she’s just a guest. Leave her be. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Dear Anthony, you’re all I’ve got. I’m so afraid you’ll leave me.”
“Oh, mother. I’d never abandon you, but I need to have a life on my own.”
“That’s what I used to think and look where it got me?
“That was a long time ago, Mother.”
“Just promise me you’ll stay away from her, Anthony. I don’t trust her.”
“Like you didn’t trust the others, Mother?”
“Listen to your Mother, Anthony. Do as you’re told.”
“Yes, Mother.”