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This article was originally written by Glenn H. Waight.
The body of a nude young woman was discovered along State St. in the East End in 1944, and neither she nor her slayer were ever identified.
Picture from Frank "Digger" Dawson's Picking Elderberries "A Small Town Story"
As Ralston's Crossing looks today, not back then, when webmaster took this and the other Ralston's Crossing picture below.
An 18-year-old River Rd. youth found the corpse June 5 around 7:30 am., wrapped in two green blankets and unclothed except for a torn pink slip around her shoulders.
Sam Winters, a high school football player, was on his way home from Crucible Steel Co, at Midland where he worked overnight. He had left a bus at Mulberry St and was walking along State St. when he noticed a pair of bare feet extending from blankets.
He ran to a nearby site and telephoned police.
Apparently strangled, the victim lay on her back in a cluster of weeds about eight feet from the roadway. The blankets were secured to the body with a seemingly little-used clothesline.
The woman was between 25 and 30, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 foot 6 and weighing around 125 pounds.
COUNTY CORONER Arnold Devon reported no marks on the body other than a discoloration on the left shoulder at the base of the neck The body was still warm when found, and Devon estimated the time of death around 5 a.m.
Sheriff George Hayes made plaster casts of tire tracks in the cinder road for possible future identification of the auto used to transport the body. All city police were called to duty in a hunt for clues and visits to restaurants and taverns to locate someone who would recognize the victim.
The following day - Sunday -- an East End man hunting for canvas to build his children a play tent, rummaged through trash at Columbian Park where a carnival had played the previous week. He came across a torn dress and another dress and skirt with rips.
It was discovered that the dead woman resembled one of the five girls in a picture of the Sheesley Carnival's "Gay New Yorkers revue. Sheriff Hayes traveled to Lima where the carnival was playing, but telegramed city police, "Girl in question was on show last night."
Meanwhile, the body was interred at Spring Grove Cemetery after a brief service at the Dawson Funeral Home where some 1,500 viewed the victim out of curiousity or in hopes of recognizing her.
Later the funeral home officials barred anyone from visitation other than out-of-towners sent by police.
Dozens of calls were received from relatives seeking a missing relative or friend, and from law agencies asking a description.
Her fingerprints were sent to the FBI at Washington in hopes that she made have worked in a war industry and identity could be made. But Director J. Edgar Hoover notified Police Chief Hugh McDermott there was no match.
More clues turned up. A St. George St. man putting away his car at 4:10 a.m. saw a driver switch off the lights of his auto as he pulled onto State St. at the railroad underpass. He was positive the license was not a blue and white Ohio tag.
OTHER LEADS died out. A woman who had quarreled with her husband in a hotel at midweek and disappeared from the show was found at her home in North Carolina.
Benwood, W. Va., police were looking for a missing woman with a leg scar. A Shadyside Ave. girl who had not been seen since Friday night in a Wellsville tavern did not match the body description of "Miss X.
Cincinnati police thought she may be a missing 20-year-old girl, but she had false teeth and the slain woman's were natural.
Today, the only known traces of the victim exist within a Spring Grove Cemetery plot, on police and funeral home records and in yellowing newspaper accounts.
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