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| "Flint Journal," May 11, 1929, via Newspapers.com |
Around eleven o’clock on the night of May 7, 1929, a wealthy twenty-one year old Harvard student named Walter Treadway Huntington left his family’s mansion in Windsor, Connecticut to buy cigarettes. He never returned.
Early the next morning, a laborer found his body in a swampy field about a mile and a half from his home. He had been shot through the head, but the gun that killed him was never found. The circumstances of his death remained a matter of dispute. The Medical Examiner, after some wrangling, finally ruled that Huntington’s death was a homicide. The Chief of Police, however, insisted the young man had killed himself, and his will prevailed. The case was officially closed.
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| The site where Huntington's body was found. |
There is a peculiar postscript to Huntington’s mysterious death. Every year until 1952, an unknown man would call or write the “Bridgeport [CT] Herald” to say that the young man had been murdered. According to this source, Huntington had been beaten, then shot in the center of town, after which his body was dumped where it had been found. “Look for a girl in the village,” the informant said. “Why was the case closed as suicide after two weeks?” he asked rhetorically, hinting that organized crime was somehow involved.
There were many other unexplained oddities about his death. Huntington had left Harvard on a Saturday night, but he did not reach his family home until Sunday evening. Where was he all that time? When his body was found, it was still warm, indicating that he had been alive for a few hours after he left home. Again, what was he doing during this gap in the timeline? Yet another puzzle is the fact that no fewer than six handkerchiefs, including one that appeared to belong to a woman, were found in his clothing. If it was suicide, where was the gun? Why were there no powder burns around his fatal wound? How to explain the fact that just before his death, he had been given a black eye? Why did Huntington’s family completely clear out his room at Harvard before it could be searched by the police?
Rumor provided no shortage of possible motives for murder. According to local talk, Huntington’s widowed mother had become romantically involved with her chauffeur, a liaison to which her son strongly objected. Could that have been a reason to kill him? Alternatively, did the victim’s own love life lead to his death? There was reason to believe that during his time in Boston, he became mixed up with women of “questionable character.” However, no evidence was ever made public linking any of them to his demise. Although this is one of those cases where the authorities undoubtedly knew more than they ever revealed, for the rest of us, Walter Huntington’s death remains an enigma.
“This is the perfect crime,” wrote the anonymous informant. He was quite right.
It's a perfect crime - if the local chief of police decides to make it one by shutting down the investigation.
ReplyDeleteThe missing gun, the black eye, and the lack of powder burns, all point to homicide. The handkerchiefs suggest some kind of pact between the perpetrators. Leaving a personal item at the crime scene symbolises each person’s commitment to their shared purpose, and also creates evidence that can be used against any member of the group who is ever tempted to betray the others.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that Huntington had a secret relationship with the unidentified “girl in the village”, who was presumably from a much lower social class. Perhaps he got her pregnant and then refused to marry her because of their difference in social status, and her family then came after him. We’ll never know if they intended to kill him or if some hothead fired the fatal shot in a moment of rage. Huntington’s black eye certainly suggests that there was a fight.
If that’s what happened, his family probably cleared out his room at Harvard so quickly in case there was any evidence of the relationship among his possessions, and then urged the Chief of Police to declare his death a suicide for fear that the truth would permanently besmirch Walter’s reputation and engulf them in a scandal.
If the woman concerned was local to the Windsor area then the women of “questionable character” in Boston were not involved, but were an indication of Huntington’s proclivities. His opposition to his mother’s alleged relationship with her chauffeur – if any of that actually happened – are not an objection to this theory, because the conventional social standards of 1929 afforded much greater latitude to a rich young man about town than to a respectable older lady.
The mystery letter writer was probably a friend of Huntington who knew enough about his life to guess what had happened, but not enough to definitely identify the killers. If he was of the same social class, he would also have been wary of the potential for scandal if he voiced his suspicions openly.