UNIDENTIFIED: February 1, 1992 Grand Rapids, Michigan Doe

 February 1, 1992, partial skeletal remains were found in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This person died between 1940 to 1992.

SOURCES:
NamUs

UNIDENTIFIED: September 19, 1902 Detroit, Michigan Unknown Man

At 7:10 p.m. on September 19, 1902, an accident would happen on Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. No 176 Woodward car heading west hit an unknown man was leaning over the side of the platform of a Rapid Railway car that was heading East. 

He was still alive and would lay on the road in the rain. He had been bleeding from his ears and had internal injuries. It was said that medical help for him was overlooked, and would soon die. The coroner arrived he was in the same place he died. Angry at the crowd that was watching the spectacle he asked why no one took him off of the road. This caused the crowd to go silent. 

In the man's pocket was an article from the Toledo Blade, the article was about a similar accident. It is possible he was recently in Ohio City. A jury found that the man's death was an accident from his own carelessness. 

The man was a white male and was around 35-years-old. He had black hair and a sandy almost red mustache. He had the tattoo J.M.C. on the upper part of his right arm. He was 6 ft and 190 lbs. He was wearing a black worsted coat, light striped trousers, a black topcoat, black flannel overshirt, black lace shoes, black socks, and a black fedora. 

It's unknown if he had been identified or not, but his grave is still marked as "Unknown Man". 

SOURCES:

Find A Grave

Detroit Free Press September 20, 1902

Detroit Free Press September 26, 1902

UNIDENTIFIED: June 18, 1959 Detroit Michigan Jane Doe

 On June 18, 1959, the Shelton's were excavating their basement with a neighbor at their home on 1936 Halleck in Detroit, Michigan. They would find the skeleton of a woman about four inches below the surface. It was stated that she was there for years and according to a newspaper she had a hole on the top of her head and a shattered jaw. 

The house was bought by the Sheltons in 1943 and the house was built in 1922/1923. It's possible she died between that time. It was originally speculated that the woman may have been killed by John Kasap and John Kurzawa who killed several people in 1940. One of their victims was buried a block away in the basement of another home. I don't know if this is still speculated about the case, I couldn't find any recent detailed information on the case. 

Jane Doe was an African American woman. She was between 25 to 35-years-old. She was around 5'0".

NamUs

Ironwood Daily Globe June 18, 1959

Detroit Free Press June 19, 1959

MISSING: Adele Marie Wells

 

On November 21, 1958, in Flint, Michigan 7-year-old Adele Marie Wells stayed home from school due to a cold. The second-grader decided to walk to her school, Jefferson Elementary School, that afternoon. She stopped at her grandmother's house around 11:30 to show her how nicely her mother did her hair. Her grandmother only lived a couple of blocks from the school and when she left it was the last time anyone had seen Adele. She never arrived at school.

There had been a report that day of a light-skinned African American man carrying a girl to a dirty Chevrolet. The man was reported to have been wearing a gray coat and red socks. It has not been confirmed that this was Adele's abductor. Other children who attended her school said that a driver with the same description of the car tried luring them into it.

Adele is an African American female and was 7 at the time of her disappearance. She was 3'6 and 50 lbs. She wore her black hair with bangs with waves on the side and had brown eyes. She was wearing a gray cotton coat, a blue dress with small animals along the hem, red knee socks, and black shoes.

Other Images:

Age progression to 63

SOURCES:

Nam Us

Charley Project

Murders of Esther and Charles Morris

On the night of September 28, 1879, around 8 to 8:30 p.m. Esther and Charles Morris were going to bed in their home in Decatur, Michigan. Their maid of 5 years was upstairs sleeping at the time. During the night possibly between 9 to 10 p.m., someone knocked on the back door of their home.

Charles was the one to answer the door. He didn't answer the door with his gun and his family believed that he may have known the person. Soon Charles was shot twice. He was shot once in the neck and once in the Chest. Charles laid dead on the back porch.

Esther was in the sitting room and may have witnessed the murder. She was holding Charles Revolver at the time. She had dropped it when the murderer shot towards her and missed. She ran and tried to hide in the closet. Inside the closet, they shot her three times. Twice in the chest and once in the arm.
A woman who worked for the Morris's, Jennie Bull, was sleeping upstairs and knew nothing until the next morning. A more recent article from 1987 stated Jennie heard Charles arguing with a man, it scared her, but she didn't hear anything else. Older articles that came out at the time contradicted this and state that even though Jennie's room was directly above where Esther was murdered she heard nothing.

The next morning either Jennie or the farmhand who was coming to the house to work found Charles first. Some articles stated that Jennie found the bodies when she woke up that morning and waited for the farmhand and told him of what had happened. As the closest neighbors weren't actually that close.


Robbery wasn't a motive for the murder as nothing was stolen except for a horse the killer road off with. There were expensive things out in the open in the house that wasn't touched. The horse was found a few days later in South Bend, Indiana. The horse seemed to be  jaded and exhausted. It was bearing an unrecognizable branding on the left rear flank.

Around 9:30 to 10 p.m., a young man returning home who lived close to the Morris's saw a man riding a horse very fast. He didn't think anything of it at the time till he heard of the murders the next day. He said the man riding the horse was wearing a strange hat.
The police tried to beat a former handyman of the Morris's into a confession. He never confessed and left the town due to the accusations and the way people treated him. There was no evidence of him killing the couple other than people's suspicions.

The crime was left unsolved and never will be.

SOURCES:
Wikipedia
Detroit Free Press
St. Joseph Herald
The True Northerner
The Herald-Palladium

Murder of Vera Schneider

Late April 24, 1920, 21-year-old Anson Best and 19-year-old Vera Schneider would meet in Pontiac, Michigan. They would walk around downtown. They would go and sit on a porch to an empty house. In the early morning the next day. Anson would then strangle Vera with two handkerchiefs tied together. He had wiped the blood from her mouth and went to the river to wash his hands. 

He would then return to the scene. By this time police had already stumbled across her body. 

To the police was obvious that whoever had done it had tried to wipe away the blood coming from Vera's mouth and stepped on a splotch of blood. This would lead the police to use bloodhound to lead them to the river where Anson washed his hands. The man who saw him came washing his hands came forward with their information. The description match Anson who was at the scene.

Anson was soon identified as the man washing his hands and taken in by police. He would soon confess that he only killed her because she asked him to do it. 

He said that the night started with her talking to him. She had asked him to take a walk downtown. She seemed down about something and he told her not to worry about it. When they got to the empty house on the sidewalk she was killed at she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss.  He states that she asked him to kill her. 

He said that she pulled out his handkerchiefs and tied them together. She then tied around her neck, but it wouldn't choke her. He sais that she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him and said goodbye. He said that she wanted to kill her so he pulled it tight around her neck. He said when he was strangling her she didn't kick at first, but towards the end, she kicked her feet a little.  

On May 7th the jury would find him guilty. He would be sentenced to life in prison. 

SOURCES:
The Boston Globe April 28, 1920
Fall River Daily News April 29, 1920
The Boston Globe May 8, 1920
The Sacramento Bee May 8, 1920
Virginia Chronicle May 23, 1920
The Logan County News July 8, 1920