Family gets some closure in 37-year-old northern Ontario cold case

On April 27, 1986, May Appleyard went missing from her home in Emsdale, Ont.

Her family has long suspected that her now deceased husband, Sidney Arthur Appleyard, killed her, but a case in 1990 could not produce enough evidence to convict him.

"He was abusive," said Appleyard's granddaughter, Teresa Schamehorn. "He just abused her, and like, it's in all the reports. Like people know."

Schamehorn was nine years old when her grandmother disappeared.

The biggest clue surrounding May's disappearance was a skull found on the family's property in 1987.

At the time, officials were unable to determine the identity of the deceased person and said the skull was from an Indigenous burial ground.

To seek answers Schamehorn contacted Ellen White, the owner of Pulse Private Investigations, to look into the case..

"I found her on the Whereabouts Unknown podcast and contacted her and asked her if she would be interested in looking into it," Schamehorn said.

"And she got back to me and she said she would."

White's company does a wide variety of investigations, but her staff take on missing person cold cases for free.

They are currently investigating 23 such cases, including 14 in northern Ontario.

White featured the Appleyard case on her podcast in October of 2021, based on her investigation, interviews and search of newspaper archives.

White said that in 1990, Sidney Appleyard's defence argued that May left her husband and was alive and well in British Columbia.

"Years later, when we came on the scene, we tracked down the Appleyards from British Columbia and of course it was not May," White said.

New DNA evidence

For May's case, White said a police officer collected DNA from the skull found on the family's property two years ago.

"So this past week the family was visited by police who advised them that that skull that's been sitting in evidence for more than 36 years now actually belongs to May Appleyard," White said.

White said that she believes police lack the resources to investigate these types of cases.

"Police officers are spread very, very thin in our opinion," she said.

"I don't think it speaks poorly to them, but I would have questions about the pathologist who very quickly identified this as belonging to an Indigenous burial ground."

White said her team couldn't locate an Indigenous burial ground in the area where the skull was found.

She added that if the skull had belonged to an Indigenous person, it should have been returned to their First Nation for an appropriate burial.

But White added that she always cautions families that any answers her team can provide won't necessarily lead to convictions.

"Ultimately, for a criminal conviction, police are going to be the people who take that case through the process," she said.

"A private investigator might be called on to give evidence. But again, we are not going to be meeting with the Crown to lay charges."

Schamehorn notes that Ellen White isn't the only person to investigate her family's case.

She says her family appreciates the efforts of author Tim Marczenko, who spent a number of years researching the disappearance of Agnes May Appleyard. He devoted a chapter to the case in his book Gone Cold: Death and Disappearances in the Northwoods which was published in 2022.

Schamehorn said that although she doesn't have all the answers about her grandmother's death, confirmation the skull ishers has been a positive step for her family.

She said the family now plans to meet with a detective to see if they can advance the case.

"We're just waiting to find some more answers here and see what we can figure out," she said.