In the course of a year I get hundreds of emailed Google alerts for the search term “Evelyn Dick”. Typically, its someone posting a copy of Vallée’s 2001 book ‘The Torso Murder – The Untold Story of Evelyn Dick’, or a DVD copy of the movie released just after the book, ‘Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story’ starring Kathleen Robertson. But one day I got an alert for something special.

This notification stood out for a reason. Just placed for sale was an item listed as a ‘Vintage Original Photo of Notorious Hamilton Killer Evelyn Dick – Torso Murder’. The photo was described as an ‘Original Print’ and showed a young woman with dark hair in a dress with a scallop neck-line leaning up against the brick of a house. The details were intriguing, the seller advertising the 4 x 3″ black and white photo as ‘A rare acquisition . . . an original photo from 1945 of the notorious Hamilton Ontario Killer Evelyn Dick, aka the Torso Murderer.’

The opening bid for the tiny photo was over $100 Canadian dollars, and there was no way of telling who else might be interested in picking up this potential piece of memorabilia or the amount it may end up selling for. Plus: was this even her?

I studied the photo of the woman with dark hair curled to her shoulders, expertly styled with a rope braid plaited at the crown. Could this be Evelyn Dick? I had no way of being sure.

Within twenty minutes I received a message from Brian Morton, playwright and fellow Evelyn researcher: “There is a new image of a teen Evelyn on eBay today I have never seen before,” he wrote to me in a hurried Facebook message. “It looks like Evelyn when she was 17 or 18 – well before she knew Bohozuk. Someone should buy the photo before it gets lost.’

I looked again at the girl in the photo in her elegant dress and a pair of solid high heels with over-sized bows at the toes. She was looking directly into the camera – a three-tiered brooch adorning the dress at the left-breast and a slim wristwatch hanging from her wrist. On the back of the photo, someone had written in cursive pencil ‘EVELYN DICK’ alongside the date, 1945.

The eBay seller claimed to have acquired the image through a private collection related to Evelyn’s co-accused in the murder trial – a young man called William (Bill) Bohozuk.

It was difficult to say with certainty that the photo was who it claimed to be, but the image was at least clear, and zooming in on the details revealed a small house number sign on the wall – #21 could be seen in what looked like a small shield on the brickwork – easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention.

If authentic, whomever had written the name on the back would have done so after Evelyn’s marriage to John Dick in Hamilton on October 4, 1945, when Evelyn was 24-years-old. The young woman in the photo did not appear to be wearing a wedding ring.

I read the details of the listing again.

I wasn’t in any position to be placing large bids on a photo, but my gut instinct told me that if I didn’t at least try, I’d be kicking myself later. I placed a low bid and waited – really not thinking anything much more of it – I’d saved the jpeg from the site, and screenshot the information from the listing. But if I owned the photo I knew I could guarantee its safekeeping, and investigation.

If this unremarkable, monochrome image showed the real Evelyn Dick nee MacLean, could this potentially alter the conjecture of her story?

As the last ten seconds of the bidding wore down my heart was palpitating, fully expecting to be bid down. Five, four, three, two, one … YOU HAVE WON! I could not believe it. There had been no other bids on this photo, which claimed to be a new image of the woman dubbed a murderess. I knew it was possible that I’d just been brutally and expensively fooled, but I also knew it was possible that I’d just taken a big leap of faith forward.

More to come …