![]() Physicians summoned to the scene concluded they were the bones of a woman who had been between the ages of sixteen and twenty when she died. Under the heading “Mysterious,” the paper noted that the bones were “in a good degree of preservation” and must have been deposited behind the wall within the previous twenty-five years – after the home was built and before Stebbins moved in, a short time before he began to expand the cellar. The Greenfield Democrat, published in a neighboring town, was the first to break the news in mid-July. ![]() ![]() This story originally appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The body, he clearly believed, had been entombed behind the wall by someone who was either unskilled in building stone walls or had been in a hurry to hide the remains. “The condition of the wall appeared as if part of the wall had been removed,” he informed the Vermont Phoenix, “and the human body crowded in, and the wall, unworkman-like, replaced.” He emphasized the term “unworkman-like” in his letter to the newspaper in nearby Brattleboro, published after press reports of the discovery circulated in the summer of 1842. ![]()
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