Pauline Ivy Dudley was a 17-year-old female who was living with her boyfriend in Milton, Ontario, after the couple had spent some time travelling. She was beginning to build a life there and had reportedly been filling out applications for secretarial work. In August 1973, she visited her parents at their home on Lakeshore Road in the Bronte area of Oakville.
Before leaving, she contacted her close friend Ilona Pallagi and asked if she wanted to hitchhike to Milton with her, something the two had done together before. Pallagi already had plans and declined.
There is a discrepancy in published records concerning the exact night Pauline disappeared. Halton Regional Police's current cold-case page lists August 10, 1973, while later reporting based on the investigation places her disappearance on August 20. The later date is also consistent with reports that it was a Monday night. In either account, Pauline spent time with her mother before leaving her parents' home at approximately 10:00 p.m. She intended to return to the residence on Third Line in Milton that she shared with her boyfriend and planned to hitchhike there. She never arrived. Her boyfriend reported her missing the following day, and she was never seen alive again.
On August 28, 1973, a farmer working his property discovered Pauline's decomposed body in a field near the intersection of Highway 25 and Lower Base Line in Oakville, just south of Milton. She was fully clothed, and her wallet was found nearby. Investigators found that her body had been partially concealed beneath hay and wheat, an apparent attempt to keep it from being discovered. Police considered the circumstances evidence of foul play. Because of the body's condition, investigators were reportedly unable to establish a definitive cause of death or determine whether Pauline had been sexually assaulted. A hairline fracture was found in her jaw.
The presence of Pauline's wallet near her body made robbery appear unlikely as a motive. Investigators were unable to establish another clear motive. Her boyfriend was investigated and has subsequently been reported as having been cleared as a suspect. Police examined several other people over the years, but none of those investigative avenues produced enough evidence for charges. Reports from the investigation have also discussed forensic evidence recovered from the scene. In 2018, a Halton detective said DNA had been found, although police did not publicly disclose the nature of that material. By 2021, investigators said they did not have a DNA profile identifying Pauline's killer, while continuing to consider whether advances in forensic technology could eventually produce new evidence.
One possible suspect emerged publicly through the work of retired Ontario Provincial Police officer Barry Ruhl. In his book A Viable Suspect, Ruhl described a man using the pseudonym "Larry Talbot" and argued that the travelling salesman could have been responsible for a number of unsolved murders involving girls and young women in southern Ontario. Ruhl said that Halton police had identified the man to him as a prime suspect in Pauline's case. The man had previously come to Ruhl's attention after breaking into Ruhl's cottage in 1971 and attacking Ruhl's fiancée; Ruhl intervened and arrested him. According to accounts of Ruhl's investigation, the man's work required extensive travel through southern Ontario, placing him in areas associated with several later homicide investigations.
The man Ruhl called "Talbot" was interviewed and investigated by police in connection with unsolved crimes, including Pauline's death, but no evidence sufficient for prosecution emerged. He died in 2008 without ever being charged in her killing. Ruhl's theory remains a theory rather than a determination that the man killed Pauline, and Halton Regional Police have not announced a prosecution based upon it.
More than five decades after Pauline disappeared while trying to make the familiar trip between Oakville and Milton, no one has been arrested, charged, tried, or convicted of killing her. Halton Regional Police continue to list her death among the region's unsolved homicides. The October 2, 1973 death date sometimes associated with Pauline is not supported by the police material located online; official and later investigative accounts establish that her body had already been discovered on August 28, 1973, while her precise date of death has not been publicly determined.
