Morag Davies did not give up without a fight.
The Sarnia realtor, described by her friends as “kind, reserved and dignified”, managed to cut her attacker in the bedroom of her house in a quiet neighborhood in the northeast of the city, where she lived alone.
Her attacker still managed to overwhelm her, and her coworkers found Davies’s body on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1988, when she failed to show up for work.
“His throat was slit and his head nearly fell off,” said his younger sister, Sandra Longmuir, 74, in a telephone interview from Scotland. (Davies was 45 when she was murdered and would be 78 if she were alive today.)
“It was horrible,” Longmuir said. “I just don’t understand.”
Davies was getting ready for bed when the killer arrived at his small home on Retlaw Drive, where he had lived less than a month.
There were no signs of forced entry into the house and Longmuir believes his sister knew the killer.
“He opened the door and he wouldn’t do that unless he thought it was safe,” Longmuir said.
A trail of blood drifted away from his body, suggesting that his attacker had been badly cut off.
It was only Sarnia’s second murder in 20 months.
Davies had first worked as an emergency room nurse after emigrating from Scotland with her then-husband, Peter.
The couple later divorced, but Longmuir and a friend of his sister’s strongly rejected any suggestion that he might be the attacker. The friend asked not to be identified.
“They had a very amicable separation,” said the friend, noting that the former couple even agreed to share custody of their golden retriever. Still, the friend said, the police interrogated him repeatedly to the point of harassing him.
“They made his life impossible,” said the friend.
Both the friend and Longmuir are suspicious of the men Davies met in the Sarnia real estate community.
Davies worked as a nurse in the emergency room until approximately three years before her death, before changing careers. She was appalled by what she viewed as a lack of respect for nurses by patients and doctors, the friend said.
“Sadly, I think that was the downfall,” Longmuir said. “Sale? It wasn’t my sister.”
Davies struggled to do something in his new career, networking and reading a stack of self-help books.
“She was always determined to do things right and right,” Longmuir said.
Longmuir was not impressed by all of his sister’s new partners in the real estate business when he came to visit months before the murder.
Davies’s friend said she had serious suspicions about a Sarnia real estate man who is now dead.
She said he was obsessed with another of Davies’s friends, an extremely attractive woman who was also a real estate agent.
He wouldn’t accept repeated innuendo to leave Davies’ real estate agent friend alone, the friend explained. “He scared me.”
Longmuir, who met this man during a visit to Canada, also found him disturbing.
“He was a hideous person,” Longmuir said.
She said this man was upset that Davies and the real estate agent he wished were close friends, while he kept his distance.
Davies and the real estate agent were concerned that the male real estate agent could damage their careers if they aggressively told him to leave.
“In the 1980s, it was a man’s world and women had to be very careful how they rejected advances from men where they worked, especially women who weren’t married,” said the friend.
After Davies’ murder, the friend said she had a disturbing conversation with the man, during which he said, “She got what she deserved.”
Longmuir also has suspicions about another man her sister was romantically involved with just before the murder.
Davies told his sister that he was about to break up during one of their regular phone calls on Sundays.
“She said, ‘The shit is going to hit the fan,'” Longmuir said. “The following Tuesday he was gone.”
Police have repeatedly said they hope tests at the forensic science center in Toronto will point them to the killer.
Immediately after the murder, police said they thought the killer had a severed artery due to the trail of blood draining from Davies’ body.
There was a review of the hospitals to see if anyone had recently been treated for a knife wound.
A quarter of a century after the murder, police said they were continuing to work on the case and hoped that advances in DNA testing would yield some clues.
“They have hair,” Longmuir said. “They had semen. I don’t know if it degrades. I think they have some blood on a letter opener. “
Davies’s body was flown to Scotland for cremation.
Researchers have alternately theorized that Davies’ killer could have been someone close to her or a complete stranger.
There was a person at the Forensic Science Center in Toronto who was assigned to the case, but newer cases got priority, meaning a wait of weeks and even months.
The researchers also withdrew as the years passed.
“I think a lot of people know more than they are saying,” Longmuir said. “Someone in Sarnia knows what happened. Hopefully someone shows up. “
The case remains unresolved.
Reference-www.thestar.com