Background
Dick was born in Beamsville, Ontario to Donald and Alexandra MacLean.
Dick was born in Beamsville, Ontario to Donald and Alexandra MacLean.
Her trials remain one of the most sensationalized events in Canadian criminal history. 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.
In the meantime, however, a partly mummified body of a male infant 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 the Prison for Women in Kingston, and eventually disappeared from public view. A well known school yard song, (with a double entendre) at the time of the murders 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.
The movie was originally scheduled to be aired on September 11, 2001, but was delayed until March 18, 2002 due to the terrorist attacks on the original air date. The case was also the subject of the 2005 film noir musical, Black Widow.
She was defended in her first murder trial in 1946 by Josip Juraj Sullivan, convicted and sentenced to hang.
