On the afternoon of September 26, 1938, I was found. I was laying in a cornfield 7 miles south of Galesburg, about 3/4 of a mile east on the road to Abingdon, along a country lane overgrown with grass. I was on the property of Mrs. John T. Palmgren by a tenant farmer, Carl Hessler (1896-1995.) While waiting for a combine to arrive, he was clearing burrs to pass the time when I caught his eye. About 50 feet from the lane, a few rows into the corn, I lay. I was wearing black slippers, light brown knee-high stockings, a pink slip and a simple gold wedding band.

The bullet entered just behind my right ear and went straight through my brain, tearing out a piece of my skull on the left side about 2 inches in diameter. It killed me instantly.

I was only 20-25 years old. I was 5’3″ tall and weighed about 115-120 pounds. I had dark auburn hair.

My Dunn McCarthy slippers were muddy, as I had been dragged along by my waist, feel dragging along. I was not killed in the field. My body was placed where it laid. Carefully between the rows, blood dripping from my head, hiding me from view.

They studied my body. They took my fingerprints and studied my teeth. There were no other injuries to my body, and they could see I had given birth before. My appendix had been removed and the faint scar remained. There were no missing persons in the area that matched me. Rumors swirled around Galesburg.

At first, my fingerprints seemed similar to those of a woman from Chicago who was once arrested for larceny. But I did not look like her, and she was found alive. Further study showed the fingerprints were not as similar as first thought. The Illinois State Bureau of Investigation was called in to assist Knox County and Galesburg authorities.

My body waited at Dean Funeral Home for someone to know me. Scores of folks came through to see my body, in hopes to maybe solve the mystery or maybe for some just morbid curiosity.

They tried following the trail of my shoes, hoping to figure out where my 5A slippers were bought, with no luck. While the rumors during the week continued, they planned to place my body in Hope Abbey, for temporary storage.

The search for clues continued. They kept trying to follow the shoes. They tried to follow the fingerprints. A bundle of bloody clothes were found earlier in the month in Tazewell County, so the blood was compared. A gas station owner on the north edge of Abingdon remembered over a week ago that a man stopped for directions and had a young woman in the back seat who was lying down.

Authorities from Chicago, Minneapolis and New York City checked to see if I was one of their missing persons, but each time, it wasn’t me. A lead was tracked, as they thought I was the missing wife of a Bloomington, IL man, but she was found alive. I decomposed in Hope Abbey, and I could no longer be identified by looking at me. Description and fingerprints and dental records were now the hope in finding answers.

An inquest was finally held, declaring my death officially murder. In the weeks after, nothing new was released.

Who was I? Was anyone searching for me? Who killed me? What happened to them?