Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I put this missing-persons story into the “mini mysteries” file, due to the unsettling lack of information surrounding the case.  The “Miami Herald,” October 6, 1985:

You could set your clock by Irene Matheson.

Since Perrine Elementary School opened six years ago, Matheson was always the first person to arrive. She unlocked the cafeteria door at 5:45 a.m., let in the cook at 5:50 a.m. and began baking the rolls, breads, cakes and pies that feed students and faculty at five South Dade schools.

"She was never late--not once," cafeteria manager Michelle Perkins said Friday. "That's why we know something is terribly, terribly wrong."

After hearing the concern of co-workers, Metro-Dade Sgt. Carl Baaske agreed and began an immediate search when Matheson, 69, did not show up for work Tuesday morning.

Police usually will not take missing persons reports until the person missing has been gone for 48 hours. This seemed different, Baaske said. 

"It's as though she dropped off the earth," Baaske said Thursday night. "With two million people in Dade County, someone should have seen her or her car by now."

Police initiated a statewide hospital search for Matheson and her 1977 tan Honda station wagon. Officers in police helicopters looked in the many South Dade canals. They were joined by Matheson's son-in-law Tony Klopp.

Klopp, an Eastern Air Lines pilot, rented two light planes for two days so he and a friend could check out the coastline, junk yards, dumps and fields. Her daughter, Cindy Klopp, spends her days driving around looking for her mother's car or sitting by the telephone, waiting for a call.

"I pray she's had a stroke or just driving around," Klopp said. Her mother is in good health with no history of mental illness.

Matheson was last seen at 11 p.m. Monday. Klopp thinks whatever happened to her mother occurred after she left for work Tuesday. The condominium near The Falls where Matheson lives was in perfect order.

"Her coffee cup and a spoon were in the sink," Klopp said, sorting through snapshots of her mother taken at family parties. "Throw pillows were put up so the puppy wouldn't get them and the door was double-locked," she said.

Police have pieced together the hours before Matheson was reported missing from information gathered from family, friends and neighbors. Grandson Scott Klopp was the last family member to see Matheson. She drove the 12-year-old from his Redland home to the Perrine Khoury League baseball field at Franjo and Old Cutler roads.

A follow-up story appeared in the “Miami News” on December 5:

The discovery--almost by coincidence--last night of the car owned by a Kendall woman who has been missing more than two months is the first significant clue police have had in weeks, but may not be helpful if the woman does not want to be found, Metro police said.

"She's an older woman, and it could be a case that she might have gone senile for some reason and doesn't want to come home," said Metro Sgt. Ernest Pruitt, of the department's missing persons unit. "I've seen cases like that before."

Irene Matheson's 1977 tan Honda was found backed into a parking space in an apartment complex at 7941 S.W. 104th St. Police learned the car belonged to Matheson, a 69-year-old baker for the Dade County school system, while running a license plate check on the car and another nearby, Pruitt said.

The two parked cars were struck by a driver who then quickly fled the scene, he said. A resident of the complex reported the hit-and-run accident--in which no one was injured--and it was only while police were investigating the accident that they learned the slightly damaged Honda belonged to the missing woman, Pruitt said.

Pruitt said residents told police that the car had been parked in the space for about a week and had been seen parked in other spaces for about a month.

Police dusted the car for fingerprints and searched it before towing it to the station where it will be vacuumed and examined by laboratory technicians, Pruitt said.  A sticker in a panel of the car's door indicated the vehicle was serviced at a station on Oct. 1, the day she was reported missing.  The sticker also indicated how many miles the car had been driven since the time of servicing.  Since then, the car had been driven about 99 miles, Pruitt said.

Apparently the last driver of the car backed the vehicle into the parking space and against a fence in order to make it more difficult to read the license tag, Pruitt said.

Matheson was last seen on the night of Sept. 30. Her relatives believe she dressed for work at Perrine Elementary School the next morning, and left in her Honda from her home at Heatherwalk Condominium complex--a few miles from where her car was found.

The discovery last night was the first break in the case. "We worked this case continuously for the first two weeks," Pruitt said. "We searched the area around the canal, had the Water and Sewer Authority people search the canals around the house in case she may have accidentally driven into one, conducted surveillances of the area around her house, conducted aerial searches of the area using heat-sensitive equipment in case we could find a body. And we came up with nothing.”

The discovery of Matheson’s car seems to have done exactly nothing to indicate the whereabouts of Irene herself.  To date, the mystery of her disappearance remains unsolved.

The Ghost Sausage of Devon

This brief, but delightfully offbeat “ghost story” (for lack of a better term) was related by author, paranormal researcher, and photographer J.P.J. Chapman:

Many years ago my late father-in-law rented a large farm near Bampton in North Devon.  The farm buildings and the dwelling house were situated half way up a steep hill overlooking the River Exe.  During a warm summer it was quite nice but with a lingering threat of bitter winds and snow in winter.

There was a lane going from the farm to a large moor which was quite 300 feet higher than the tillage.  Now, it is well known that large open spaces, devoid of any useful vegetation and situated atop a high hill, frequently possess a bad reputation.  Of a summer evening my wife and I frequently took a walk to the moor.  It commanded a wonderful view, while the sunsets were a sight to behold.

The lane ended at a gate which led into this moor.  Quite a while before the events to be related my wife and I frequently remarked that it was an eerie spot and the sooner passed the better.  Personally, I never gave it much thought for, being a “country lad,” I knew of many such places which were not nice--and that was all that could be said.

However, things proved otherwise.  My wife and her sisters rode a lot and took turns exercising the horses.  Sometimes they went out together.  I can still see them up on the moor, putting the horses into a gallop and thoroughly enjoying the wild ride.

On one occasion one of the girls was asked by her father to go on the moor to see if some cattle had strayed.  It was in the autumn and, the sun having set, it would soon be dark.  My wife’s sister decided to ride up.  Having seen that all was well she was just about to leave the moor, through the gate which she had left open, when the horse suddenly shied.  Nothing would induce it to pass through the gate.  There was no alternative route except by a long detour, so go through they must.

After several attempts she decided to dismount and lead the horse through.  This time as they reached the gate a curious luminous shape could be seen drifting nearby.  It was like an elongated sausage, with baleful eyes.  The whole thing seemed to be pulsating, from dim to bright.  It was in a vertical position except for a sideways, wavering movement.  To say the least, the girl was frightened but made up her mind to face it.

Placing herself between what-ever-it-was and the horse she coaxed the animal through.  When the horse was half way it broke loose and galloped down the lane for about 50 yards where it stopped and waited.

There were several curious facts concerning this particular haunting.  It took place only at dusk--no other time.  No other animals, except horses--any horse--were affected.  But here again was a most remarkable fact.  It had to be a horse and a human.  If there was not this combination nothing happened.  The “Ghost Sausage” as I dubbed it, seemed anchored to one spot, its movements restricted as related.  Several times I visited the place but, while noticing there was something there, never could decide what.  The ghost seemed quite harmless.  I got the impression that it was neither good nor bad.  It was just some form of a ghost--nothing more.

There was a big disused quarry nearby; possibly some earth spirit had been released.  My sister-in-law stated it was a greenish colour, about a foot across and five feet high.

This is the end of my story.  If the present residents of the farm ever see it, I don’t know, as we have not been near the place for the last 35 years or more.

What it was, how it originated, I do not know.  I never could find out.  Your answer will be as good as mine!

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the latest Link Dump!

This week, we are honored to be visited by some genuine royalty.

That time someone stole 80,000 pounds of butter.

The complicated medieval legal term, "raptus."

The Roman Woman of Spitalfields.

How medieval Europeans ate before contact with the Americas.

You never know what you'll find in medieval latrines.  Other than the obvious, of course.

You never know what you'll find in a field.

You never know what you'll find in your kitchen.

You never know what you'll find in a Luftwaffe bathroom.

The Surgeons' Hall Riot.

Neanderthal dentistry.

The Prohibition-era "medicine" that left people paralyzed.

A Philadelphia Loyalist during the American Revolution.

The sinking of the Empress of Ireland.

The man who gate-crashed his own wake, which seems a bit impolite.

The newest research about Mary Boleyn.

Why is 3/I Atlas weird?  Because it came from a weird neighborhood.

Speaking of weird, God only knows what's lurking in our oceans.

By the way, lightning's pretty weird, too.

The CIA and the Sphinx.

Ted Turner and the Tasmanian Tiger.

Inventions that were behind their time.

90 years ago, a weird creature was found off the west coast of Canada.  We still don't know what it was.

The man who went from making razors to making a metropolis.  (Spoiler: He had more luck with the razors.)

The mystery of the "copper scroll."

The (probable) murder of "Diamond Flossie."

If you've been longing to know what outer space smells like--and who hasn't?--read on.

What might be the world's oldest arrowheads.

The "lost years" of Samuel Johnson.

A particularly grim murder case.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a ghostly sausage.  No, really.  In the meantime, here's some Vivaldi.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Here is yet another example of that popular supernatural staple, “a vision of murder.”  The “New Orleans States,” February 19, 1911:

SYDNEY, Feb. 18. — A most mysterious story comes from Perth, West Australia. The mysterious disappearance of a girl named Ethel Harris led a representative of a Perth newspaper to make an investigation, which had sensational results.

He communicated his discoveries to the police and the developments became still more remarkable. The story is briefly as follows: Some four or five years previously a man who called himself Wilson went through some kind of official ceremony with Ethel Harris, whereby she thought she was married to him. A little time ago, however, she disappeared, and some suspicion was aroused. Her father made inquiries of Wilson, who was now working at a foundry under the name of Smart, and was told by the "husband" that his daughter had gone to Adelaide on a holiday, and was well and happy. Then followed investigations which found that Wilson, alias Smart, had not really married Ethel Harris at all.

It was found also that under the name of Smythe he had shortly before married a girl named Mary Jane Pemberthy, and that he had a wife living in Victoria, and an adult son in Perth. He was arrested on a charge of bigamy, and inquiries into the fate of Ethel Harris were pursued. The strangest circumstance in the whole strange story, however, is that Miss Pemberthy told of a vision she had of an apparition in the bathroom of the house in which she was living with Wilson, or Smart. She declared that she saw the form of a woman struggling in the bath, and gave a minute description of the vision, which appeared to her on two occasions. But the police obtained several more tangible clews to the fate of the vanished girl, with the help of the marvelously clever black trackers, and eventually excavations were made under an old disused smithy in the neighborhood.

The result of the exploration was the discovery of a human body, which was strongly presumed to be that of the unfortunate girl.

At the time the message was sent Arthur William Smart had been sentenced to two years for bigamy. Further developments in the case will be awaited with great interest.

Wilson--or Smart, or Smythe, or whatever you care to call the creep--was eventually found guilty of Harris’ murder, and was accordingly executed.

The Fatal Honeymoon

Our story began like a fairy tale:  At a New York City social gathering, a handsome, suave young Chinese lawyer meets the pretty, cultured daughter of a wealthy merchant prince from Macao, and the pair fall in love virtually at first sight.  Seven months later, in May 1928, the two are married, and go off on a romantic honeymoon trip, after which they live happily ever after…

Well, scratch that last part.

After they were wed, Chung Yi Miao and his bride, Wai Sheung Siu, traveled to Montreal, where they took an ocean liner to Glasgow.  After seeing the sights in Scotland, they headed for London, prefaced by a side trip to the Lake District.

The newlyweds checked into the Borrowdale Gates hotel at Grange-in-Borrowdale, in Cumbria, on June 18, 1928.  Chinese tourists were at the time a rarity in the area, so the young couple attracted a good deal of attention, especially since the new Mrs. Miao was fond of bedecking herself with striking and extremely costly jewelry of pearls, jade, and gold.  The pair seemed to be as happy and affectionate as you would hope to see from any honeymooners.

The day after their arrival at the hotel, the couple had lunch, and then went out arm-in-arm for a walk to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings.  Around 4 p.m., Chung returned to the hotel alone.  When a staffer asked if he wanted to wait for his wife before having tea, he said “no.”  Chung explained that she had gone shopping, and wouldn’t return until six.

6 p.m. came and went.  No Wai.  At 7 p.m., Chung dined alone, seemingly completely unconcerned about his bride’s absence.  Two hours later, the hotel’s manager, a Miss Crossley, asked him about Wai’s non-arrival.  He said calmly that he had a slight cold, and so Wai had gone to Keswick to buy him some medicine and warmer clothes for herself.  At 10:30, Chung casually asked a maid, “What do you think we ought to do?  Should we inform the police?”  Instead, he went to bed.  

Meanwhile, around 7:30 that evening, a farmer named Thomas Wilson was walking near a river about a mile outside of Grange.  He saw a woman wearing a fur coat sleeping--at least, that’s what he thought she was doing--under an open umbrella.  Odd, that.  When he mentioned this to friends, one of them, a police detective who was vacationing in Grange, decided to turn his leisure time into a busman’s holiday, and went to see the woman for himself.

The “sleeping” woman proved to be the missing Mrs. Miao, quite dead.  She had been strangled with a piece of string and two lengths of cord from a window blind.  (The cord was established to be identical to those used at the Borrowdale.)  She had also been badly beaten around the head and face.  The expensive jewelry she had been wearing was gone, and the murderer had arranged her legs and clothing in a way to suggest that she had been raped, but the autopsy found no sign of sexual assault.

Despite these attempts to make Wai look like a victim of some random footpad, investigators had no trouble focusing on one particular suspect.  By 11 p.m., the dead woman’s husband received a visit from the police.  When told only that his wife was dead--without anyone relating the circumstances of her death--Chung immediately exclaimed, “It’s terrible--my wife assaulted, robbed, murdered!”  He continued to behave in a strange manner while being questioned by detectives--for some reason, he was anxious to know whether his wife was still wearing “knickers” when she was found.

Chung’s trial, which was held at Carlisle Assizes, was relatively brief and lacking in drama.  The young lawyer insisted he was innocent--that his wife was the victim of Chinese jewel thieves.  (This argument was considerably weakened after the jewels Wai had been wearing were found hidden in Chung’s luggage.  However, Chung claimed that Wai herself had put the jewelry there, for safety.)  The defense pointed to the fact that shortly before the murder, locals had observed two unknown Chinese men around Grange. These men were seen getting on a train for parts unknown the morning after the murder.  Chung claimed that these men had been following him and his bride ever since they were in Glasgow.  He also stated that under Chinese law, Wai’s considerable property reverted to her family, leaving him with no financial reason to want her dead.  His seemingly incriminating remarks to police were, he said, a misinterpretation of his imperfect English.

The prosecution did not bother to offer a motive for the murder--their case was essentially, “We don’t know why he did it, but we know he did it.”  The case against him was largely circumstantial, but such evidence can be remarkably convincing.  The jury had little difficulty delivering a guilty verdict, and Chung was accordingly hanged at Strangeways, Manchester, on December 6, 1928.  He maintained his innocence to the end, bitterly complaining about the police “not trying to trace the real murderer.”

Crime historians generally agree that the jury made the right decision.  What makes this case unique is that no one has ever been able to find a reason why this educated, sophisticated young man, who appeared to have a golden future ahead of him, threw it all away by committing the cold-blooded murder of his new wife.  (And in a remarkably bungling fashion, at that.)  This gaping hole at the center of the story has led to a number of possible theories, each more baroque than the last.  It has been pointed out that soon after the wedding, Wai went to a female doctor with a very intimate problem: she was physically unable to consummate her marriage.  Did this lead Chung to kill his bride in a burst of sexual frustration?  Alas for this proposal, it is also known that on May 25, Wai had minor surgery which presumably resolved the issue.

A newspaper article of questionable validity claimed that after discovering that his wife would never be able to bear children, Chung felt he had no choice but to murder Wai so he could marry someone who could perpetuate his bloodline.  It seems most likely that this story emerged from some reporter’s over-imaginative fancy.

Did the Chinese tongs have something to do with the murder?  At the time of Chung’s trial, there was a rumor afloat that he had belonged to the Chapa tong, which led to the suggestion that the tong had ordered him to marry and then murder Wai, in order to gain her wealth for the secret society’s benefit.

Or did the tong instruct Chung to kill Wai out of some revenge plot against her rich and powerful family?  Or perhaps--just perhaps--did some Chinese tong murder Wai themselves, meaning that Chung was guilty of nothing more than possible prior knowledge of the deed?  After all, no one has ever been able to explain the presence of those two unknown Chinese men in Grange…

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the Link Dump!  Our host for this week is the very handsome mascot of HMS Barham!

The herbalist of Spitalfields.

The "Exposition Universelle" of Paris.

The King of Switzerland.

Cleopatra's mysterious death.

A shipwreck from WWI has just been discovered.

The real "Lord of the Flies" was nothing like the novel.  Thankfully.

The laughter epidemic of 1962.

Ancient Roman nanotechnology.

The life of the "American Dwarf."

Private jets and the apocalypse.

French POWs in Britain.

A disappearing cat in 1894.

The Southampton Plot of 1415.

A Victorian tale of a mother's grave.

China's Cold Food Festival.

The still-mysterious Great Pearl Robbery.

The still-mysterious Min Min Lights.

A murder and a questionable "guilty" verdict.

The madcap theory that "ghosts" are just infrasound.  Look, kids, my house is haunted, and I can assure you, it ain't infrasound.

A 19th century murder investigation.

That's it for this week!  See you next week, when we'll look at the tragic--and mysterious--end to a honeymoon.  In the meantime, here's Bob Seger:

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This brief, but particularly unsettling UFO account was given by John Keel in the “Staten Island Advance,” June 29, 1967:

One rainy night in early March, Beau Shertzer of Huntington, W. Va., and a young nurse, were riding in a Red Cross Bloodmobile along Route 2 in the Ohio Valley. Suddenly, according to their story, a bright glare fell over the night-shrouded road. Looking out of his window on the driver's side, Shertzer was astounded to see a huge luminous machine hovering directly overhead and keeping pace with his vehicle.

Two long arm-like projections seemed to come from the object, one on either side of the Bloodmobile, he said later. The nurse became hysterical as Shertzer stepped on the gas, certain that the object was trying to pick up his truck. 

Fortunately for the horrified pair, another truck appeared from the other direction and its approaching headlights seemed to scare the "thing" away. 

Today Beau Shertzer refuses to drive along Route 2, even in the daytime.

I for one don’t blame him.  You have to wonder what would have happened if that other truck hadn't interrupted the proceedings.