Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

All at once she started, then leaned forward. What was that down on a ledge? It couldn’t be possible. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought she saw. A parcel, something tied, and out of it sticking a foot, a leg, a human leg. She must be seeing things!

She felt she had enough of a walk. Her one thought was to get back to Moffat.

“You’re daft,” said her brother when she told him.

“I’m not daft. If you don’t believe me, you can go back with me.”

“But what would anyone be getting rid of a body there for? Why, it’s the main road from Carlisle to Edinburgh and cars passing all day. Oh, well, just to please you, Susan. Come on.”

Alfred Johnson climbed down into the ravine and with a stick gingerly poked at the parcel. It certainly was a foot and leg with most of the flesh removed. There was another suspicious looking parcel nearby. He prodded it. It was hard and round. Suddenly he knew. A head.

He came scrambling up.

“You weren’t so daft after all,” he conceded. “That down there is a matter for the police. Here, here, don’t faint. I can’t carry you home to the hotel.”

Police Inspector Strath and others of the Dumfriesshire Constabulary undertook a search of the ravine. Their first finding consisted of four bundles, one wrapped in a white silk waist, one in a pillow slip, and two in pieces of cotton sheeting. Distributed in these bundles were thirty anatomical portions including one trunk, two heads three arms and hands, two legs and feet. Adhering to the trunk was straw. Pages of newspapers had been used as inner wrapping.

Next day a roadman found four more bundles wrapped in newspapers.

The poor remains were taken to the Moffat morgue or mortuary and deposited there. The county police saw at once that they were confronted with one of the most terrible crimes they had ever dealt with, and one which might prove as insoluble as the still mysterious Brighton trunk crimes which had baffled Scotland Yard.

They called upon the criminal investigation department of the Glasgow police, and a hurry call was sent to two of Scotland’s most noted medical crime experts. These were Dr. Gilbert Miller of Edinburgh University and Dr. John Glaister, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Glasgow University, now carrying on the tradition of his father who had for thirty-three years occupied the same chair and written the textbook still used in the class.

The present Professor Glaister has written a number of books on his subject and is rising rapidly into fame as one of the foremost figures in the world of criminal investigation.

The anatomical portions were conveyed to the crown or state laboratory in Edinburgh and there Professor Glaister struck the first blow in the battle.

A strange and gruesome feature was that on the wrappings there was not a single spot of blood. The blood had been carefully drained from the bodies before anything else had been done.

“This is the work of someone with surgical experience,” said the expert. “Someone who has worked in a dissecting room, perhaps even one of my own profession.”

The two men, assisted by Dr. Brash, Professor of Anatomy began the uncanny business of building up the portions into their respective bodies. It was announced at first that the remains were those of a man and a woman, for one of the trunks was missing.

Streams in the neighborhood were drained and fished, for there had been heavy rains and it was thought other portions might have been carried away from the ravine to places lower down.

The police were deluged with inquiries as to missing persons. It seemed incredible that so many people could have vanished out of touch with relatives and not been reported. But none of those reported missing seemed to match up with exhibits in the Edinburgh laboratory.

In the first week of October several other portions were found near by the ravine. They enabled Professor Glaister to pronounce both bodies as those of women, and, though there were still missing a torso, two feet and an arm and hand, to give some definite picture of the two victims.

Number One was that of a woman of twenty to twenty-five years of age, plump and well developed. She had been killed by blows from a blunt instrument on the head. Several teeth were missing, some drawn after death. Though there was no trunk, she had both arms, hands and legs.

Number Two, with trunk, was that of an older woman, 35 to 40. A bone in the neck, fractured, pointed to strangulation with the hands. Signs of bleeding in the lungs indicated asphyxia. All teeth missing but one, some removed before death, some shortly after. One of the missing legs was found nine miles from the ravine October 28, and the missing hand and arm, after a storm which laid low the gorse, on November 4.

The more the experts studied the remains, the more convinced they were that the work was that of a man who knew his anatomy and surgery. Each individual joint had been severed with a sharp instrument.