{"id":2595,"date":"2018-09-22T13:59:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T11:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/?p=2595"},"modified":"2018-09-23T11:33:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T09:33:41","slug":"a-gruesome-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/?p=2595","title":{"rendered":"A Gruesome Find"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re going about your day when you come across something completely unexpected. Something, well, gruesome. The following stories, culled from Marion\u2019s past, demonstrate that even in the most mundane situations can take a horrific turn.<\/p>\n

\"boys
The May 21st, 1934, Marion Star<\/em> headline.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What the Boys Playing in the Dump Found<\/strong><\/p>\n

On May 21st, 1934, five boys playing at the city dumping grounds on Marion-Agosta Road found a human head. The boys, all of whom lived on Bennett Street, notified police. The county coroner, Dr. Axthelm, examined the head and determined it had been discarded by a medical school. According to the Star:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0He expressed the opinion that it is an elderly woman, probably a Negro. The head and some of the preserved face muscles were covered with a coat of shellac, and the veins and arteries were filled with a colored paste to enable students to study them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. Axthelm planned to forward the head to the Ohio State medical school.<\/p>\n

The Discovery in the Erie Rail Yards<\/strong><\/p>\n

Strangely, on the very same day as the human head discovery, railroad workers unloading sheet metal at the Erie yards discovered three men in one of the freight cars. Two of the men, Arthur Wells and Leo Shultis, both of Poughkeepsie,\u00a0had died instantly when a load of metal shifted and fell on them. The third man, Thomas O\u2019Brien of Boston, was found alive but later died from his injuries at the city hospital. The three men had met up in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and were hoping to make their way to Mitchell, South Dakota, where Mr. O\u2019Brien had family.<\/p>\n

This story appeared in the Marion Star<\/em> during the Great Depression when it was common for men to ride the rails from town to town looking for work.<\/p>\n

The Murder of Violet Elswick<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the morning of December 6th, 1953, at another dump just east of the Little Scioto River in Green Camp, an unnamed Marion man \u2013 a \u201cjunk man\u201d according to the Star<\/em> \u2013 and his son were picking through the dump when they spotted a hand \u201cshowing above a pile of rocks, tin cans and other debris.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"elswickThe hand belonged to 31-year-old Violet Elswick, and investigators soon determined that someone had strangled her to death. When investigators later picked up her husband, 37-year-old Bert Elswick, for questioning, he quickly confessed to the crime.<\/p>\n

Both Violet and Bert had checkered pasts. Violet Elswick had served two years in the Marysville Reformatory for Women after she burned down a house near Martel. Bert Elswick had served time in a Maryland prison for armed robbery.<\/p>\n

Though originally from the Ironton area, both had ended up in Marion, presumably to see if their fortunes improved. They didn\u2019t. At the time of his arrest, Bert was only marginally employed doing odd jobs, mostly as a welder. The two were sharing a dilapidated 6\u2019 by 12\u2019 shack with a man named William Baker on the north side of the Little Scioto River in Green Camp.<\/p>\n

According to the confession Bert gave to investigators, after spending the evening drinking in both Marion and Green Camp taverns, the two had gone to the dump, which was a few hundred yards way from the shack, to search for a bottle of wine they had hidden there earlier. They got into an argument, and Violet hit Bert in the nose. Losing control, Bert grabbed her by the throat and strangled her. After she slumped to the ground, he told investigators he sat there drinking wine for a time and \u201cthinking what to do.\u201d Eventually, he went back to the shack and passed out until investigators came knocking the next morning.<\/p>\n

On March 26th, 1954, a common pleas jury found Bert Elswick guilty of manslaughter, and he received a sentence of one to twenty years at the Ohio Penitentiary. He died in 1985 at the age of 69 in Ironton, Ohio.<\/p>\n

The junk man and his son were never mentioned again in any of the Star<\/em> articles. However, one can only imagine that the image of what they found\u00a0that morning stayed with them for a long time.<\/p>\n

The Fetuses<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the turn of the century, it was not particularly unusual for the residents of Marion to chance upon the tiny, lifeless bodies of a fetuses. What follows are a few examples of these heart-breaking discoveries.<\/p>\n

On November 22nd, 1894, the Marion Daily Star<\/em> reported that a fetus has been discovered on the property of a man named Jacob Findling on Girard Avenue. The exact circumstances of the discovery \u2013 who made the discovery or how the details became public \u2013 are not given. The article only states that an “indignant\u201d Mr. Findling, in a meeting with the mayor, had claimed that \u201chis name and his family name had been connected with the find and he wanted to know if there was not some way to stop this talk and comment.\u201d The unvoiced implication is clear: a fetus found on the Findling property suggested that someone \u2013 possibly an unmarried Findling family member \u2013 had been pregnant and either miscarried or had an abortion.<\/p>\n

\"coroner
The April 1, 1908, Marion Daily Star<\/em> headline.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another very short\u00a0article appearing in the March 11th, 1902, edition of the Star<\/em> mentions that two fetuses had recently been found by boys playing \u201cin the commons at the rear of Leader Street.\u201d The article goes on to state that coroner Robert Ramroth was carrying out an investigation that had brought to light \u201csome facts that may lead to something sensational.\u201d Oddly, this is the only mention of either the\u00a0discoveries or\u00a0Mr. Ramroth\u2019s investigation to appear in the Star<\/em> that month.\u00a0What (if any) “sensational” information\u00a0Mr. Ramroth hoped to make public\u00a0remains a mystery.<\/p>\n

This last incident, described in the April 1st, 1908, edition of the Star<\/em>\u00a0is perhaps the most macabre. Farming Street resident Orville McCombs told officials that his wife spotted their dog with something in its mouth, and when he went to investigate, he realized that his dog was carrying a fetus. Unsure of what to do, he buried it at the rear of his property. Some of his neighbors later notified the police of the incident. In response, the chief of police sent a sanitation official as well as the county coroner to Mr. McCombs\u2019 property to dig up the 4-month-old fetus. Apparently finding nothing worth pursuing, the coroner ordered the fetus re-buried. The final resting place of the fetus as well as where the dog originally found it are unknown.<\/p>\n

Note: A special thanks to\u00a0Dodi Mawer at the Marion County Historical Society<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>who helped research this article.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/span>
The Marion Star<\/em>,\u00a0May 21, 1934<\/span>
The Marion Star<\/em>,\u00a0December 6, 1953<\/span>
The Marion Star<\/em>,\u00a0December 7, 1953<\/span>
T<\/em>he Marion Star<\/em>,\u00a0March 26, 1954<\/span>
The Marion Daily Star<\/em>,\u00a0November 22, 1894<\/span>
The Marion Daily Star<\/em>,\u00a0March 11, 1902<\/span>
The Marion Daily Star<\/em>, April 1, 1908<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine you\u2019re going about your day when you come across something completely unexpected. Something, well, gruesome. The following stories, culled from Marion\u2019s past, demonstrate that even in the most mundane situations can take a horrific turn. What the Boys Playing in the Dump Found On May 21st, 1934, five boys playing at the city dumping […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-just-plain-weird","category-true-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2595"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2607,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2595\/revisions\/2607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}