Blue Moon (22 page)

The judge asked me, “Do I understand that you refuse to give evidence and refuse to be sworn.”

“That is correct. I have not had a chance to talk with my counsel.”

Mr. Urquhart asked if I would “think the matter over until tomorrow morning,” I nodded my head in reluctant agreement. When I discussed the matter with Mr. Sullivan—who, I am sure, was certain I had lied about Bohozuk's involvement in the case—he told me I must do what I considered to be in my best interest. “I might add, however, that whether or not you remain silent, I am certain Bohozuk will be exonerated. The evidence against him is not that strong and is completely contradictory.” I also realized I would harm any chance of my appeal being granted if I revealed that Bohozuk—contrary to the evidence I had given the police—had had nothing to do with John's death. So on the next day, I again refused to offer testimony. Bill's lawyer wanted some punishment to be imposed upon me, but the judge—knowing he had no real power over a woman condemned to be executed—shrugged his shoulders, “A woman can always change her mind.” He also decided to discharge the jury in the absence of my testimony and wait until a decision had been reached in my appeal. He reminded the lawyers that I could not be expected to offer evidence which might prejudice my own cause. A man of incredible finesse and tactfulness, Urquhart had been a client of mine.

Twenty-five grounds of appeal were mounted in Mr. Sullivan's brief to the Court of Appeal for Ontario, which set January 7 as the day for the hearing—the day on which I was to be executed. When Mr. Sullivan called their attention to the unsuitability of this date, Chief Justice Robertson postponed my hanging to February 7.

At the appeal, a new lawyer assisted—according to
The Globe and Mail
—Mr. Sullivan. My mother claimed that the services of J.J. Robinette, later one of Canada's most eminent criminal lawyers, were obtained by her on my behalf: “A Christmas present for Evelyn.” That was a boastful lie. I had seen brief mentions of the then-largely unknown attorney in the press and asked to meet with him just before Christmas 1946. I retained Robinette for two reasons. I was then involved in a nasty skirmish with Mr. Sullivan over legal fees. I had paid him $6,900, but he claimed I had agreed to pay him a total of
$7,500. More importantly, I was not certain the theatrical mode of defence had worked effectively and wondered if Robinette's mastery of the intricacies of the law might work more effectively.

During our ten-minute conversation after his hour's drive from Toronto to Hamilton, Robinette agreed to represent me. His biographer, Jack Batten, quotes him: “The reason I said I'd take her case was because I'd been following it in the newspapers and I wondered about those statements she gave to the police. It didn't strike me that they should've been admitted as evidence, and I thought I had a reasonable ground for appeal right there.” He might have added that he was an extremely ambitious man and that a successful defence of me could do wonders for his prospects. A no-nonsense man with a dry wit, Robinette scoured my face intently. He seemed more interested in looking at—rather than listening to—me. Later, he told me he was sizing me up for the long battles ahead. On that day, he reminded me his approach would be different from Sullivan's.

“I do not believe in the couturier-approach to defending any client, male or female.”

“You mean you're more hard-nosed than Mr. Sullivan?”

“I wouldn't put it quite that way. My talents—if I may label them such—are vastly different from his. He pointed Mr. Barlow and the jury in the right directions, but it led nowhere. He did not rebut the case against you in a logical-enough fashion. He made Barlow angry; he confused the jury; he forced the press to see you as a wronged Hedy Lamarr figure; he excited awe and envy. I work in a much more straightforward manner. I can promise you a thorough but sober representation.”

At the appeal, Robinette attacked the outcome of the trial in three major ways: the unprofessional and biased conduct of Judge Barlow, the obvious fact that Donald MacLean was directly involved with the murder, and the absences of proper warnings in my various interviews with Wood and Preston. In their unanimous finding in my favour, the five justices ignored the evidence presented against Barlow and my father, but they agreed with Robinette about the conduct of the police, particularly their misuse of the charge of vagrancy as a cover with which to obtain incriminating statements.

My conviction having been set aside, I could once more be treated like an ordinary prisoner and released from isolation. After Mr. Sullivan visited me for the last time to tell me in detail the outcome of the appeal, he told the press: “She was feeling very happy at being allowed to mingle with the other girls. She looked pretty pale, with no makeup. She was wearing the ordinary jail dress with a red sweater over it. You members of the Fourth Estate better watch out. She's a serious young lady. She reads all the time and has been keeping a journal. She tells me she wants to become a writer when she leaves prison!” He guffawed and then went on to offer some other remarks, supposedly off the record: “She's hog-fat now” and “She eats like a horse.” I am sure all those revelations were generated by my quarrel with him over money and by my firing of him. When his observations were made public, he said: “The reporter misunderstood me, but she is
not
slim.”

Three weeks later, I appeared in court to testify in the now-resumed trial of my father and Bill.
The Globe and Mail
treated the event as fodder for a fashion column:
“Mrs. Dick, attractive widow of the torso murder victim, has apparently gained considerable weight since she was sentenced to hang and confined to solitary at Barton Street Jail. According to her mother, however, she will probably be able to get into the black silk dress she wore during her fast trial. Over that she'll be wearing her grey kidskin coat”
On the following day, my dress was described as
skin tight;
it was suggested that I could accurately be described as
short and fat,
but that my hair, under its sequined tam, looked
very smart.
On the other hand, the two males were
well fed, trimly clad, and in the best of condition.

I was not asked, praise goodness, to offer testimony because it was determined on that day that my father, Bill and myself would go on trial together on February 24 during the spring assizes of 1947. On the first day of that trial, however, the Crown attorney argued successfully that the case of
The King v. Evelyn Dick
be once again sequestered from that of the other two defendants.

Mr. Robinette was pleased by that decision and immediately set about to take full advantage of the decision of the appeal court regarding the inadmissibility of the incriminating evidence supposedly extracted from me by Wood and Preston. In these attempts, he met a considerable match in James McRuer, the Chief Justice of the trial division of the Supreme Court of Ontario—and a bitter enemy of Chief Justice Robertson, who had written the decision granting my
appeal. He forced Robinette to rehash
in camera
the case he made to the Supreme Court, made it obvious that he disagreed violently with their conclusion, but in the end, yielded, somewhat ungraciously: “I would not be obedient to the very express findings of the Court of Appeal if I were to admit any of the statements.”

Strangely enough, my second, duller trial generated even more public interest than the first. Far larger crowds gathered to stare and hiss. In Hamilton, my detractors feared Robinette might be able, as it were, to get me off the hook. In an attempt to place me at the scene of the crime—now an extremely difficult feat—Mr. Rigney introduced a new witness, one Frank Boehler.

A tall, skinny, blond who did not look like he had attained the twenty years he claimed for himself, Boehler told of working on the farm of one James Hamilton situated on the Glanford Station Road on which I had alleged the murder had taken place. At about three o'clock on the afternoon of the murder—on March 6, 1946—he had noticed a Black Packard parked on the right hand side of the road about a half a mile away. He had gone to the barn to tend to a sick cow, and, while returning to the house, saw the car again. A second later he heard two shots and then a third.

“There were two shots simultaneously, sir, both together, and then I walked towards the house and I was scraping my boots off in front of the door and I heard a third shot. They were quite loud and they were from a heavier calibre, either a rifle or a revolver.”

Rigney asked him, “Why do you say that?”

“I have done a lot of hunting and have handled a lot of guns in my time and I can pretty well tell when a gun is fired whether it is a shotgun, rifle, or revolver, by the report of the shot.”

Not thinking much of what he had heard, he returned to the house, picked up a cowboy magazine, went upstairs to his bedroom, where he lay on the bed for three quarters of an hour reading. At twenty to four, he went downstairs, put on his boots and looked out the window to see if it had stopped raining. The car was in the same place, but it was running—as he could see the exhaust. He went outside, picked up his milking cans, returned to the barn and began his chores.

“While I was in the barn I looked out the window and I saw a man coming into the driveway. He got nearly opposite the house and he kind of hesitated for a minute, and then walked towards the house. I stepped out of the barn door and asked him what he wanted. He came towards me, and I walked to meet him. He said the car was stuck in the road.”

Since his work for Mr. Hamilton involved pulling out cars stuck in the mud, he offered his assistance. When Boehler could not get his tractor to start, he hooked up a team of horses and grabbed a rope. When he reached the Packard, he saw another man standing beside it and a woman in the car behind the driver's wheel. Boehler wrapped the chain around the bumper and the axle of the car and then went over to speak to the lady, who rolled her window down. He instructed her: “Don't start the car but place it in neutral.” He towed the car about fifty-five yards. The man who had been standing by the car told him he had no money to give him but offered a cigarette. “No,” the young man told him, “I got cigarettes of my own.”

Asked by the prosecutor to describe the woman in the car, the witness remembered she was young with dark hair. While speaking with her, he had noticed two things: a package of cigarettes on her lap and an open handbag, out of which the handle of a revolver stuck out.

The snow was skipping against the high window panes of the courtroom, but that sound was completely drowned out as everyone listened intently to the witness.

Next, Rigney asked the young man: “Is there anything else you saw in the car when you were talking to the driver?”

“On the floor of the back seat there was part of a man's leg.”

“Why do you say part?”

“I could see only part of it—the part below the knee, the calf of the leg and the foot. It was up against the right rear door and over against the seat, the cushion of the back seat.”

“Were there any socks or anything on it?”

“There was a black oxford shoe and a black sock, and dark blue trousers or black—I couldn't vouch for the colour, sir. The shoe was directly under the window, leaning against the door. Toe up, heel down, leg placed as if part of a body lying flat on its back.

“Look around the room and see if you can identify the woman in the car you saw.”

He nodded in my direction. Rigney inquired, “You mean the dark-haired woman in the black dress?”

“Yes.”

The report in the following day's
Globe and Mail
is correct: “There was a sigh of inhaled breath from the spectators. Mrs. Dick gazed directly at the witness and her black eyes flashed. Her colour heightened as she sat upright. Her full red lips parted and sheframed a word which seemed to be, 'Liar!'”

Mr. Robinette's questions to the witness were uttered so rapidly in machine-gun style that McRuer instructed him to allow the witness sufficient time to answer. My attorney shot back: “I intend to cross-examine this witness rigorously, my Lord.” The audience snickered at this exchange, infuriating McRuer to the extent that he threatened to clear the court if the spectators insisted in treating the trial as something for their entertainment. Mr. Robinette did not change tactics.

“Did you testify in the previous trial?”

“No.”

“Did you read about it in the papers or see pictures of the accused.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You never came forward? Did you feel this information would be of any assistance to the police?”

“Well, I didn't want to get involved.”

“Did you mention this incident to anyone? Perhaps your employer at the farm?”

“No.”

“Did you mention it to friends or members of your family?”

“No, I didn't.”

“You claim to have seen what you describe. Yet, you read about the case and at no time breathed a word to anyone about this fantastical encounter. Why are you here today?”

“Well, I told a bit of it to a guy at the garage and I guess it came back to Inspector Wood and he found me.”

“When was that?”

“A few weeks ago.”

Having established firmly in the jury's mind that this bit of information had been collected by the policeman whose various interrogations of me were not allowed into evidence, Robinette changed the drift of his questioning.

“I understand you're a veteran, Mr. Boehler?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Under what circumstances did you leave the army?”

“Honourable discharge.”

“For what reason?”

“My health was bad.”

“Was your health diagnosed as a mental condition?”

“Maybe.”

“Where have you worked in the past two years?”