The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-06-27
Thinks Carriage Had
Nothing to Do With
the Mystery.
THE BODY IN THE SwAMP.
Mrs. John Deforge Located
in North Brookield
Last Night.

Clinton, June 26.-State Detective Pc
! leg F. Murray came to town this morn
| ing He registered at the Clinton house.
Then he saw Deputy Sheriff Bartlett,
and together they went to see Alexand-
err Wade.
Wade is the man who saw the car
riage in the brush, near the swamp.
| Detective Murray said that Wade, af-
ter the detective had refreshed his
memory, fixed the date when he saw
the horse and carriage, as late as May
%.
Detective Murray said that in his
opinion this would go a long way to-
ward disposing of the theory that the
carriage had anything to do with the
body found in the swamp.
Il think" said the affable detective,
that the body has been in the swamp
all winter and that 1t has lain under
water most of the time. 1t would not
be possible for decay to proceed so far
in body freshly brought to the spot
at late as May o."
This reopens the perplexing question,
of the teeth, Of how long the body did
lie where it was found
At the autopsy Detective Murray ex-
pressed the opinion that the body had
not lain SO long as had been thought.
The theory then was that the body was
brought to the swamp late in the fall
or early in the winter.
Chief of Police Bates, the first man
except Medical Examiner Tobey to see
hn diGpnV-
cred, believes that the body did not lie
there more than few weeks. He
thinks the condition of the remains
from the knees down is to be taken as
the index of time. Decomposition
might have proceeded as far as it had
in the limbs during three or four weeks
of hot weather. He thinks that fire is
accountable for the condition of the
trunk and the rest of the frame.
But if Detective Murrays idea that
| the body lay in tbs water through the
winter is correct, and if he is correct in
his opinion that decomposition would
not advance so far as it did within a
period of four weeks, the theory that
the carriage seen by Wade and Osgood
was a part of the crime. is eliminat-
| ed.
The length of time necessary for a
body to reach such stage Of decom-
position is something upon which doc
tors disagree The moisture in which
| 1t rested, they all admit, could have
greatly FASTENED decomposition, and If
acid or fire was employed, it might
have accelerated it still further. The
fact that legs from the knees down,
which were not touched by acid or by
fire, were in a good state of preserva-
ton, is certainly significant, as Chief
of Police Bates asserts, as going to
show the condition in which the entire
body might have been had it been left
unframed and would also strengthen
the theory held by many that the body
had not been in the swamp more than
a month or two.
William Shedden returned from Bos-
ton today, where he mad9 a fruitless
attempt to gain some information re-
garding his erring wife. He found that
she was last seen on Pitt street, at
place which she sometimes frequented,
a year ago last November, but a few
days after she left her home in Oak
dale The people at that resort
claimed that they had not seen her
since or heard anything concerning.
When last seen she was with we'll
dressed man, with whom she had
quarrel.
Shedden states that he was asked
to go to the autopsy. but he was not
called upon to view the body. Medical
Examiner Tobey, he says, after the
autopsy, took him one side and told
him that the dead woman was not his
wife, but he still feels that he would
have been better satisfied could he have
seen the body and decided for him
self
After his interview with Wade De-
tective Murray ate dinner at the Chm
ton house. He conversed with the rep
resentative of The Spy and took the
o'clock car back to Worcester.
rlr
preston of his opinion to the effect
that the woman never found her way
to the swamp and death by herself
The astonishment that so little should
be done to unveil the mystery of what
all the authorities assert to be most
foul murder, grows and grows. Abso-
lutely no work has been done upon the
case, except what Deputy Sheriff
Bartlett can do in the intervals be-
tween his other duties, which are
many. The newspaper men have done
all that they could. In fact they have
brought forward every fact of real or
apparent value that has been disclosed,
outside the finding of the body.
State Detective Murray has assured
a representative of The Spy that there
is no clue to work upon, absolutely
none" But a police official, who does
not care to have his name mentioned.
saws that there is as much to work
with as there has been in many cases
in which the murderer has been de-
tected and brought to justice.
He starts off with the proposition
that there is a body in a swamp which
could not. reasonably speaking, have
fallen from the clouds. Either the wo-
man walked into the swamp alone or
with a companions; or she was brought
there dead. If she walked there, some
bodv must have seen her. She would
| have been a conspicuous figure. If her
bodv was taken there, somebody may
have seen the conveyance that brought
the body 1t must have come some dis
lance.
According to this officials idea. the
work to be done is the same that Pink
erton detectives do, where there Is
nothing but the body and the locality
in which the body was found, to work
from.
This method is to draw an imaginary
circle around the scene. Then inter
view every man within that circle, as
far as possible.
The chance is that within a radius OF
two or three miles there will be some
body who saw either the woman or
the conveyance that bore her.
I know" said the speaker. that this
sort of detective work isn't brilliant.
and it isn't the kind that ingratiates