Crime Immemorial

Only a few days before 1963 came to a close, a pregnant woman in Canada would apparently wander out into the snow and meet her doom shortly thereafter, at the hands of an unknown assailant.

Twenty-year-old Margaret Sheeler lived with her husband Philip in a townhouse in London, Ontario. She had gotten pregnant the previous July, there had been a hasty wedding in October, and rumor had it that Philip—who was a known alcoholic with anger issues—wasn’t all that excited to be starting a family at this stage in his life.

On the evening of December 27th, though, the Sheelers had planned a party. Guests started arriving at a little past eight p.m., but by the time they got there, Margaret had already vanished. Philip was drunk, and informed the guests that he and Margaret had an argument, and that she had set out on foot into the snowstorm to go stay with her parents.

Philip reported his wife missing on the following day, but her whereabouts would not be discovered until three weeks into the new year.

On January 23rd, 1964, two boys out walking in a field near Kipps Lane in London, Ontario came across the nude body of Margaret Sheeler. She had been murdered by a blow to the head that had fractured her skull. She had not been raped, though her clothes were strewn randomly all around the area.

Police immediately focused their attention on Margaret’s husband Philip, who admitted that he and his wife had argued prior to her disappearance. It seemed very strange that the five-months-pregnant Margaret would have gone out into a blizzard on foot to go to her parents’ home, as Philip had claimed, since the couple owned a car which was still in the driveway. Further, Margaret’s parents lived nearly an hour’s drive away. It was also suspicious that Margaret’s body was found only a little more than three-hundred yards from the Sheeler home.

Despite the circumstances, however, investigators were never able to obtain enough solid evidence to charge Philip with the crime, and the case subsequently went cold. It remains possible that Margaret Sheeler did in fact meet with a stranger who killed her after she fled angrily out into the snowstorm, but the true answer will probably never be known for sure.