Dr. Edith Wightman

*** This piece contains disturbing details of a tragic death with information drawn from contemporary newspaper accounts.  It’s darker than anything I’ve posted here before. ***

Like my father, I was born in Hamilton, Ontario.  My parents spent their newlywed years in the city.  My dad worked at one of the city’s legendary steel mills.  When he decided he wanted to become a teacher, he enrolled at Hamilton’s McMaster University.  I know he was at McMaster in 1968 because an article published in the Hamilton Spectator, in May of that year, noted he was chairman of the student social committee. 

One year later, a Scottish born Oxford graduate named Dr. Edith Wightman took a position in McMaster University’s History department. 

Hamilton has been on my mind recently because of its central role in my family’s life.  Between September 1995 and January 2000, I was a graduate student and teaching assistant at McMaster.  I studied history.  I shared an office with other teaching assistants on the fourth floor of Chester New Hall.

At the time, I knew there’d been a murder in that office years earlier.  I’d heard only the vaguest details.  A female teacher.  Rumours of a disgruntled student.  I knew enough to know that it happened.  But I really knew nothing at all.

I learned more yesterday.  Part of me wishes I hadn’t.  If you read below, you’ll see why.  But part of me is thankful I know more about Dr. Wightman.  Because she deserves to be remembered. 

The headline on page one of the Spectator on Monday December 19, 1983, six days before Christmas: Prof handcuffed in Mac Murder.  A chilling opening paragraph.  “Dr. Edith Wightman suffocated in the cluttered cubbyhole of an office at McMaster University with her eyes and mouth taped shut, her wrists handcuffed and no one to help.”

Forty-three years ago, police treated crime scenes differently.  Today, the media would never get anywhere near that scene.  In 1983, below the large, bold headline, was an even larger photo of “the office in which Dr. Edith Wightman was murdered.”  The picture shows chairs, papers, a typewriter, and what must be blood smeared all over the floor.  It is awful.  The paper reported “there was no evidence of sexual assault although the body was nude from the waist up.”

There’s a photo of Dr. Wightman as well.  A professional headshot, likely taken for the university’s directory.  Dr. Wightman with dark hair, and dark glasses hiding intense, intelligent eyes.  She looks tall and thin.  Wisps of hair cover her ears and not her earrings. 

On December 24, 1983, Christmas Eve, the Spectator published a tribute to Dr. Wightman, titled, Edith – Scholar and friend, written by her colleague Dr. Dan Geagan.  I knew Dr. Geagan when I was at McMaster.  He was an extremely kind and thoughtful man, who was also passionate about the History Department’s summer softball team.  I had many conversations with Dr. Geagan, but I never knew about the colleague he mourned, and how her death must have affected him.  On that long ago Christmas Eve day, he wrote how Dr. Wightman would be remembered for her “lively personality, her keen wit and her dedication to the University and its ideals.”

Two weeks later, the university held a memorial service.  The reporter who covered it wrote, “She had a zest for life.  She was a warm and sensitive person who gave and evoked from others affection and friendship.” The university’s president addressed all those who gathered, and he did not ignore that Dr. Wightman had been murdered, speaking both for, and to the assembled crowd when he said, “We are still searching for a more complete account of its horror, so that we can somehow, most unwillingly, accommodate it.”

An arrest, and a more complete account soon followed.

On January 18, 1984, Michael Alan Crowley, appeared in court, charged with first-degree murder.  He was not a former student, acquaintance, friend, or partner of Dr. Wightman.  He was a stranger. 

Justice moved faster in 1984 than it does today, and the language we use has changed significantly, with a headline on October 12, 1984, screaming: Life term for transvestite killer.  The article detailed how Crowley pled guilty, and admitted to handcuffing Dr. Wightman, taping her eyes and mouth and shoving a rag down her throat.  Crowley claimed her death was an accident, and that he’d driven to the university “looking for credit cards or money to buy Christmas presents.”

His intent to harm her was clearly not accidental.  He brought handcuffs and tape. The killer was a chemist and the rag that killed Dr. Wightman was soaked in chloroform.  He partially disrobed her.  After murdering her, he used her credit cards to buy a Christmas present for himself, including a video game.

When it was all over, the newspaper interviewed the lead investigator.  That interview includes the most complete account of Dr. Wightman’s murder: “This is what he did … He stopped his car … and he told police he put on a black and grey plaid skirt, a white blouse, a short-haired brown wig, black pantyhose, black boots and a beige-colored trench coat.  He wore makeup, rouge, lipstick and a pair of female glasses.  He parked at the rear of the campus and then wandered around the buildings for a while.  He walked into Chester New Hall, by Dr. Wightman’s office where the door was open and her back was turned toward him.  He went for her purse on the floor, as Dr. Wightman stood up saying, ‘what do you want.’  Crowley put his hand over … [her] mouth and pulled her to the floor.  He then stuffed a towel in her mouth so she could not scream.  He said he took her boots off but did not remember pulling her pants down.  He said at this point someone knocked on the door and he panicked … In his statement he said: ‘a stupid theft turned into a tragedy … she was moaning faintly so I thought she would be alright.  I left the building as quickly as I could.’”

Dr. Wightman was an accomplished historian who devoted her work to the Roman Empire.  Her last book, ‘Gallia Belgica’ was published posthumously.  Her Wikipedia page notes that the book was described as “magisterial.”  At her memorial service a colleague described her as “warm with friends, a teacher who could bring out the best in students and a constructive feminist who taught by example.”

Evil took Dr. Wightman’s life on a quiet Saturday morning in December 1983, on a campus that must have been eerily quiet as Christmas approached.  Evil extinguished a bright, kind light that shone on her family, friends, colleagues and students and made the world around her a better place, in part by illuminating the past.

It’s been twenty-six years since I set foot in Dr. Wightman’s office.  In the 1990s, I spent hundreds of hours in that room.  I knew something terrible had happened there, but I did not know how horrific and tragic it was.  In all the time I spent in that office, I didn’t know anything about Dr. Wightman’s life or career.  I wish I knew then what I know now about her.  I could have asked more questions and tried to honour her memory – perhaps displaying her photo, or a copy of her book.  I could have done something to make that space seem less dark and more sacred, in tribute to a woman who deserves to be remembered for the life she lived.