Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1909 — A Grewsome Find and a Jokesome Young Man. [ARTICLE]

A Grewsome Find and a Jokesome Young Man.

Some fifty persons who were around the Monon depot this, Saturday morning, were taken into the freight room of the depot and shown the bones of a human arm, with the collar bone or clavicle, breast bone, attached and all the bones of the hand and even the finger nails clinging together. Small particles of the muscle about the joints held the bones intact, and it was plainly a part of a human skeleton, and to all appearances belonged to a woman who had not long been dead. The young man who exhibited it was Hurley Beam, son of Agent Beam, who with a straight face told that he had found it and other parts of a human body just east of the stock pens along the Monon tracks. The other parts which he claimed to have found were one leg and a part of a skull. The local north bound freight crew were all called in to look at the bones and many advanced theories as to how it might have been left where the young man claimed to have found it. Some thought it might have been thrown there from a car window by some person or persons who were concealing a murder by distributing the parts of the body along the railroad track, others wondered if any one was missing from Rensselaer, and the greatest interest was evidenced by all who saw it. The city marshal and the editor of the Republican viewed the grewsome part of the skeleton and plied young Beam with questions. He maintained without a quiver that the parts of the body were found along the track and accompanied the writer and the marshal and Roy Gundy to the scene of the purported discovery. There he weakened and admitted that it was just a little joke for those not credulous enough to institute an investigation. He stated that he had procured the bones from a local physician, who was cleaning up his office and did not want to keep them longer. Investigation proved that the latter story was true, and that he had no object other than to create a little excitement and string the officers and newspaper reporters.