The Oct. 14, 1937 issue of The Streetsville Review's coverage of the event ("Grave robbers in Streetsville") was a little more reserved than that of the Toronto Daily Star's front page story that day, which featured the headline: "Search for maniac in ghoulish crime."

The Toronto publication was not referring to Adolf Hitler, pictured on the left side of the page as history moved towards the Second World War, but the grave robbery in Streetsville.

Photos of the empty casket, the ditch where Pope was found and pictures of Pope's parents were published in the Toronto newspaper.

The Daily Star article also included a copy of another message that police supposedly received around the same time Pope's body was discovered. The piece of paper had a map drawn on it with six possible places the body could be found.

The note read: "Tell the caps (sic) to look for body at circles (don't know ourselves where for sure) dumped it as no good for ransom."

The note was signed "Streetsville Gouls."

The Oct. 21, 1937 edition of The Streetsville Review had a notice from the Village offering a$100 reward for information leading to the "discovery, apprehension and conviction" of those involved in the theft.

The crime appears to remain unsolved.

In an Oct. 31, 2002 Streetsville Booster article titled "Streetsville's grave robber(s) 'Streetsville ghouls' haunted the Village 65 years ago," writer Tom Urbaniak looked back at the incident and the resulting fear that struck the village.

"Concern mounted when a similar crime took place in Woodbridge later that month and when part of a casket, not connected to the Pope family, was found in a field about five kilometres east of Streetsville," he wrote. The piece turned out to be an outdated sample used by salesmen in pitches to undertakers.

Urbaniak's piece went on to say that "haunting notes" continued to turn up around the area. Although, he added, it could have been the work of pranksters.

Leaving no stone unturned, Urbaniak wrote that investigators at the time went as far as visiting a nearby school to gather and compare writing samples to find their ghoul(s).

The bizarre story was also touched on by Richard Collins in the Jan. 11, 2006 edition of The Booster. In his article "Streetsville was centre stage for one of Mississauga's earliest unsolved mysteries," he mentioned another strange theory going around that the incident could have been a "macabre sales gimmick" carried out by a stonemason.

While Collins acknowledged that the "theory was thin," he pointed out that Pope's body was later "encased in a concrete sheet filled with liquid cement."

Addressing the idea that medical students were to blame, Collins suggested that the poorly written notes didn't seem characteristic of "educated thieves." However, it could've been a "ruse to throw the police off."

Police questioned the farmers in the area, some of whom had boarders who were former inmates at Ontario's mental hospital, according to the Toronto Daily Star's report on Oct. 14, 1937.

Anson Pope, Hayden's father, didn't believe his family had been targeted, instead blaming youths inspired by reading "cheap fiction thrillers."

Whatever the reasons, the incident left Peel's residents shaken.

"We're as nervous as can be," Mrs. South, mother of body finders Bernice and Shirley, told the Daily Star. "Obviously the person who did this is a lunatic, and he is still at large. The children pass that spot every day and you don't know what that lunatic might do."