Wild Roses:
It was just after 5:00 pm on Friday, November 9, 1945, and Pamela Argyle was walking her dog. She decided to take a rarely used shortcut that crossed through the field near Burnside Road and Grange Street in Saanich on Vancouver Island. As she passed by a clump of wild rose bushes, she saw the body of a young girl covered by a green winter coat.
Pamela did not touch the body. She ran up Burnside Road to find a phone to call police.
Myfanwy Dorothy Sanders, known as Dot to her friends and family, had been missing for just over three weeks. She was found just blocks from her home wearing the same clothes that she had worn to work on the day she was reported missing.
No one searched for her:
Clearly, the police had not thoroughly searched the area around her house, or perhaps not searched at all.
I learned of Dot’s existence completely by accident. I was putting together a story about Molly Justice, a 15-year-old girl who was murdered two years earlier (and in episode 49 of the podcast). She was found in the same general area and a short newspaper article with the heading “two mysteries not yet solved,” mentioned the names of both girls.
It makes me sad to look at Dot’s smiling photo in the Victoria Times Daily taken shortly before her death. Not only did she have a tough life she was treated horribly in death. Her disappearance wasn’t taken seriously and nobody looked for her.
Jury brings back open verdict:
Later, when her body was found and it was determined that she was murdered, the coroner’s jury were directed to bring in an open verdict. They said that she died from suffocation (either smothered or strangled), and they didn’t have enough evidence to decide how, when, or why she died. It effectively closed her case and nobody investigated her murder. She’s not listed as an unsolved murder in Saanich, in fact when I spoke to the Saanich Police when I was researching Dot’s story for Cold Case BC, they hadn’t heard of her at all.
There are three potential suspects in Dot’s murder: Vernon Blanchard, who died in 2004 in Victoria, leaving behind four children and eight grandchildren; Arthur Sanders, Dot’s father; or a complete stranger.
Should you wish to ask Saanich police why Dot’s murder case is not listed on their books, the number to call is 250-475-4321.
- Copies of my new book, Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck, are available through my publisher Arsenal Pulp Press, or from any independent bookstore across Canada
Show Notes:
Sponsor: Erin Hakin Jewellery
Music: Andreas Schuld ‘Waiting for You’
Intro and voiceover: Mark Dunn
Sources:
Vital Statistics
Coroner’s Inquest
Interviews with Sanders’ family and acquaintances and Saanich Police
Cold Case BC: The stories behind the Province’s most intriguing murder and missing cases
Related:
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