#coldcase

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Bobette x Rodger !

Coldcase (Cleo/Drift)

“I discovered a plausible myth, a trove of red herrings, and, finally, what appeared to be the truth.” 

Who killed the Fudge King? For our sister publication The Atavist Magazine, Tom Donaghy investigated—and possibly solved—a decades-old cold case about the murder of Harry Anglemyer, the beloved owner of a fudge shop empire. 

The summer of 1988 was hot. That's what we all remember. It was a summer of beaches, pools, and seeking out air conditioning. No one expected it to also be the summer of grief.

It started on July 3, at least for the public, when the remains of a woman were found along Route 140 northbound in Freetown, a then quiet highway that ended in New Bedford at the corner of a park and zoo. She was found by a passerby who stopped to relieve herself in the bushes. The remains were partially clothed and had no identification. She would remain unidentified for months.

By month's end, on July 30, another body was found, this time on Interstate 195 in nearby Dartmouth, a town to the west of New Bedford, by two men on motorcycles who stopped to relieve themselves in the brush. The woman had no identification. She would also remain unidentified for months.

It would take months, and the reported disappearance of more women, before the community realized a killer lurked in its midst. Eleven women went missing sometime between April or March and September of that year. Nine were found; two remain missing.

Self-Defense or Murder? 😨

🕵️‍♂️ Chilling Menendez Case – Murder or Survival?

Founded in 1670, the town of Wallingford, Connecticut has witnessed centuries of change. Once connected to multiple influential figures in Colonial history and the American Revolution, by the 1800s the town became an industrial hub and in the later part of the 19th century Wallingford found itself featured across headlines all over the country. Unfortunately for the residents of the town, this new notoriety had nothing to do with Wallingford’s industry and everything to do with a horrible discovery.

On the morning of August 8th 1886 brothers Edward and Joseph Terrell, their friend Giles Sommers, and Edward’s dog were walking along an isolated dirt road looking for berries when they noticed something out of place. Hidden under some bushes was an 18” X 30” wooden crate with lettering on the outside claiming it was holding a “dozen pairs of finely stitched men’s shoes.” It seemed innocent enough, but when the dog approached the box its curiosity quickly turned to barking and whines of warning. Then there was the stench. The men left the scene, later returning with crowbars. When they pried open the box there were no shoes. There was straw, soaked in blood and packed around a headless human torso wrapped in tar paper.

The news of the horrific discovery sent shockwaves through Wallingford and beyond. The medical examiners estimated the torso belonged to a man between twenty-five and forty years old, weighing anywhere from 150 to 175 pounds, and that they had been dead between five and ten days before being discovered packed into the shoebox. Interestingly, the stomach was removed by the medical examiner and they discovered that there was a large amount of arsenic present in the victim’s system before he died. While this was all valuable information, it was the only information and the hope for answers quickly faded with authorities openly admitting there was very little to go on. As stated by the coroner, “This is the most mysterious case I have had since I was appointed coroner. With one exception, I have found out exactly what caused death, but this case puzzles me more than any yet. I can’t say whether or not I have obtained any clues.”

Newspaper headline about the body in the box. Image via newenglandhistoricalsiciety.com

The torso had no other bruises or injuries and it appeared the limbs and head were severed haphazardly with a knife or similar dull object. It was buried the next day but the questions continued to permeate headlines and conversations. One of the first suspected victims was Arthur J. Cooley, a Civil War veteran with very well known problems with drinking. Cooley worked at a local slaughterhouse for two decades before abruptly retiring and collecting a pension of $1,500 and his family had recently reported him missing after he was seen leaving a tavern but never returning home. But, Cooley eventually reappeared after an extended time away drinking and the mystery resumed. The next theory was more of a stretch and asked the people of Wallingford to look back to a series of fires that destroyed multiple buildings in town. Three years earlier Frank H. Morse Jr. was accused of setting two buildings ablaze that his father, Frank H. Morse Sr., was using for glass production. There was no question that it was arson, the guard was drugged prior to the fires breaking out and the charges were that Morse had his son intentionally set the blaze in order to collect insurance money. The trial of Frank H. Morse Jr. was recent, taking place only five months before the torso was found but due to a lack of evidence and Morse Jr. having an alibi that he was home the night of the fires, the charges were dropped. If Morse was truly home the night of the fires, did his father have someone else commit the crime for them and did they end up in the box as a punishment for not covering up their tracks well enough to prevent the suspicion of arson? When the torso was discovered the arson case was still open and people wondered if there was a connection. Others wondered if the murder was not an isolated incident. Only a few weeks before finding the torso in the box Edward Terrell was walking in the same area with his dog when he found the body of a deceased woman. Medical schools were questioned, rosters of missing persons were scoured, and there was no answer to who met their grisly end with a stomach full of arsenic but without their limbs and head.

With no human connections being made, authorities looked to the box for answers. The torso was packed into a wooden crate that was manufactured for a shoe factory located over 100 miles away in Fall River, Massachusetts. From there the box was filled with shoes and shipped to a wholesale boot and shoe dealer in Chicago, Illinois who then sent it to a local shoe shop. Once the crate was unpacked it was thrown in the back of one of these shops before it was sold to a man who was never identified. While this was the fairly normal lifecycle of these types of shipping cartons, the fact that it was in Chicago raised some more suspicions. Only a few months earlier in May 1886 Chicago was the site of the bloody Haymarket Riot where striking laborers fighting for workers’ rights clashed with police in Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown into the crowd killing multiple people leading to the arrest of eight labor leaders and the eventual execution of half of them. With the riot fresh in their minds, the crate’s ties to Chicago, and no other leads, people began to wonder if the crate was shipped back home from Chicago containing the body of someone involved in the riot that fell to a different form of  justice.

The absence of answers left a lot of room for speculation to thrive. One story claimed that a mysterious bag was seen at the bottom of a well that disappeared before it could be recovered and a young man claimed that he saw the box sitting in the bushes for over a week before it was found. Rumors and theories swirled but in the weeks following the discovery there were some random, but very real additions to the story. Early in the investigation pieces of scalp were found near the site of the body in the box but they provided no groundbreaking information other than the pieces pointing to the victim having dark hair. While these pieces of scalp could not be proven to be from the same victim, another discovery had a connection that was hard to ignore. On September 26th a farmer found a pair of arms and legs near the site where the bloody box was found. The limbs were not at the site when the box was originally discovered and they were wrapped in the same tar paper as the torso.

With these seemingly connected, terrible finds people began speaking up. A local Wallingford woman came forward and told the authorities that in early August a disheveled, bearded man knocked on her door asking for directions to a nearby pond. He was carrying a sack and was wearing a shirt covered in blood but she assumed he was homeless and directed him to the water. She stated that later on she saw him again, walking past her house without the sack and wearing a clean shirt. With the first real lead finally coming out the police prepared for a manhunt, but only a few days later the woman totally recanted her story stopping any progress. Another woman named Mabel Preston claimed at first to know everything regarding the murder and was subpoenaed by the court but once she was under oath she changed her story, saying she knew absolutely nothing about the crime. She didn’t have much time to change her mind again, two years later Mabel committed suicide.

With the only two possible leads revoking their information the case was left floating in limbo until it gradually began to fade from the headlines and public memory. Major news about the case would not appear again until 1926 when the former police chief of Wallingford came forward with a shocking claim. Dan O’Reilly was chief of police when the bloody box was discovered in 1886 and four decades later he spoke exclusively to The Journal, not to discuss his opinions of the case, but to say that he knew exactly who the murderer was. According to O’Reilly, he had “several reasons” for never disclosing the truth about the killing including: “…the fact that the perpetrator of the crime, that is the actual killer, has now been dead nearly twenty years and I know of no good reasons why the descendants or relatives of the murderer should be made to bear the ignominy which revelation of his identity would impose on them.” But who were these descendants that would be so affected? O’Reilly told the paper that contrary to opinions, this murderer was not some rogue bloodthirsty madman or a cold-blooded predator, he stated the killer “was no outcast beyond the pale of society, but the scion of one of New England’s oldest families, a native of New Haven county, whose ancestry traces directly back to the Mayflower.” He also revealed details about the victim, that he was a resident of Fairfield county and that he was brutally murdered to silence him because he was aware of people involved in a “serious crime” committed against the state of Connecticut. Despite these salacious claims and the decades gone bye he reiterated that he would not change his mind on his secrecy, stating: “…I shall carry this secret, already locked in my heart for twenty years, to the grave with me.” O’Reilly kept his promise, never disclosing the name of the killer.

Story printed by The Journal where former chief Dan O'Reilly claimed to know the killer. Image via newspapers.com.

The “Wallingford Shoebox Murder” was never solved and is still considered an open case despite the trail going cold nearly 140 years ago. Today the most prominent remnant of the crime stands silent, but in plain sight with the road where the box was discovered now being officially named Shoebox Road.

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Sources:

Kilianski, Michael. “The Connecticut Shoebox Murder Mystery: America’s Oldest Cold Case.” Blogspot.com, 23 May 2021, creativehistorystories.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-connecticut-shoebox-murder-mystery.html.

Landrigan, Leslie. “The Mystery of the Wallingford Shoebox Murder.” New England Historical Society, 8 Aug. 2015, newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-mystery-of-the-wallingford-shoebox-murder/.

Mangan, Gregg. “The Shoe Box Murder Mystery.” ConnecticutHistory.org, 8 Aug. 2020, connecticuthistory.org/the-shoebox-murder-mystery/.