Identified! DE - Bear, WhtFem 16-25, UP7097, pregnant, in laundry bag, Mar'67 - NamUs removed

[CarlK90245]

Were we able to determine that BP was in fact a missing person?

No, but with Cubby's help, we found the facebook page for the son of RK, whose obituary was discussed in this thread.

I just got done sending him a Facebook PM to ask him if he is the son of BPK, and if so, if BPK is the same BP that attended the Tatnall School Class of 1962. I explained my reason for asking in as tactful a way as I could, and didn't mention the circumstances of Miss X's death. I only mentioned that Miss X was found on a roadside in Bear DE.

I also included a side-by-side of the Miss X facial reconstruction and the 1961 11th grade class photo of BP.

 

[cocomod]

I am also very curious Carl to find out your results.

I am also curious to find out if Billy gets a response regarding Glenda Tedball.

This case is so very sad. Thanks for sleuthing out there everyone!

 

[CarlK90245]

No, but with Cubby's help, we found the facebook page for the son of RK, whose obituary was discussed in this thread.

I just got done sending him a Facebook PM to ask him if he is the son of BPK, and if so, if BPK is the same BP that attended the Tatnall School Class of 1962. I explained my reason for asking in as tactful a way as I could, and didn't mention the circumstances of Miss X's death. I only mentioned that Miss X was found on a roadside in Bear DE.

I also included a side-by-side of the Miss X facial reconstruction and the 1961 11th grade class photo of BP.

RK's son replied. He says that BPK was his father's second wife, and she was not his mother. BPK married his father in the 1980's. And he believes that P....... was a surname from a previous marriage, not her maiden name.

So it looks like BPK was not the same BP from The Tatnall School. It also looks like the B (first initial only) K in the Social Security Death Index was probably BPK, not Tatnall School BP.

 

[Zanko]

I think about this UID female every day. Although quite up there in age, it's still possible that this lady's mother is still around. Someone must care about her. I wonder if determining that the case wouldn't be prosecuted would give her a name?

 

[Cubby]

I'm glad RK's son was kind enough to reply and provide that additional information. That was very kind of him to answer, being that we volunteers/researchers are complete strangers. TY RK's son!

Carl, have you or has anyone been able to find any alumni info for Tatnall HS? Sometimes the class reunions list alumni who have passed on. I wonder if we can find any Tatnall High aluni who can confirm they knew BP was alive after the date our UID was found. Just thinking of other ways to continue to explore this possibility.

 

[CarlK90245]

Carl, have you or has anyone been able to find any alumni info for Tatnall HS? Sometimes the class reunions list alumni who have passed on. I wonder if we can find any Tatnall High aluni who can confirm they knew BP was alive after the date our UID was found. Just thinking of other ways to continue to explore this possibility.

I can try the same approach that I did with the girl in the Alcala collection with the grey fur coat, who I am almost certain is a woman (WF) who I found in a 1970 Washington Irving High School (NYC) yearbook. With this case I was able to locate 25 of WF's classmates in Facebook. However, of the few who responded, none of them remembered WF.

But with BP, I suspect that there is a better likelihood that her classmates will remember her. The Tatnall School was almost certainly a more tightly knit group than Washington Irving HS was. There were only 24 girls in the Tatnall Class of 1962. It's a little strange that many of the girls have hyphenated surnames. I doubt that they were married at that age. It's probably more likely that their hyphenated surnames are the combination of their mother's maiden names and their fathers' surnames, though that is not common with Caucasian American women.

I'll see if I can find any of them in Facebook. None of the 24 are listed in the Classmates alumni listing for that class, so I will have to cross-reference from the pages of the yearbook.

Cubby: I'll send you a list of the 24 women from the Tatnall School class of 1962. If anyone else wants the list, PM me, and I will send it to you.

 

[Cubby]

Can you send the entire class list including males? It might be easier to search and cross reference using the male names. Especially as many of the females names would likely be changed having been married. It's quite possible if any of this class is still in contact via FB a search of friends lists might find some from the class male or female.

Also has anyone found any online info regarding class reunions from the Tatnall class of 1962? That may be another route to research.

 

[CarlK90245]

Can you send the entire class list including males? It might be easier to search and cross reference using the male names. Especially as many of the females names would likely be changed having been married. It's quite possible if any of this class is still in contact via FB a search of friends lists might find some from the class male or female.

Also has anyone found any online info regarding class reunions from the Tatnall class of 1962? That may be another route to research.

Tatnall School Class of 1962 was all female, although they enrolled males and females to the Class of 1964 and after.

I ran a facebook screen for Tatnall Alumni, but apparently, Facebook no longer has the option to further screen by graduating class. I browsed through the people listed and found very few women who looked that old. There were a couple, but their graduating year was not indicated in what non-friends can see.

 

[Reality Orlando]

It would explain the laundry bag, as I'm guessing their basement probably was where the laundry was. It also could explain the panties back on, as the mother probably put them on thinking she'd recover and then bled to death. It says that Glenda had a "thigh" vaccination. Aren't the US usually done in the arm? Anyone know about Canada's?

I have a thigh vaccination and I'm from the states. If I remember right the first was in the thigh and the second (booster) in the arm but I could be wrong about that.

 

[CarlK90245]

One other thing I found in the yearbook, on one page it details the history of the Class of 1962, and what year each student arrived at Tatnall. The red-bold part refers to BP.

The Class of 1962 had its unlikely beginnings in the Fall of 1949 when little B…… L..... let go of her mother’s hand and ventured into Kindergarten. The following year, she was joined by B…., P….., and R….. . The four became fast friends in spite of their dire threats not to invite each other to their respective birthday parties. By the time they reached the mature age of eight, two new members of the class had arrived: V……. had not had time to acquire an antipathy toward her “Snappy” nickname, nor had S…. yet learned to roll her hair in a French twist. B…… F…. and Dodo swelled the ranks in the Fourth Grade. In the Sixth Grade, an optimist known as M…. joined us. And then, during the historic year of ’56-’57, we were invaded: from Outer Tatnall came S…. to draw for us, M… to keep us in touch with reality, V……. to moderate our enthusiasms, A…. – a future skier, M…… – destined to edit our hard-wrung reports, N…. – our blonde, E…….. – our financier, S….. our materialist, S.. – our equestrienne and B…… – our link to the goings-on of the outside world. B… and B….., both free-wheeling literati, made the scene in 1957. In the Ninth Grade, we acquired D…… and the Siren-of-the-South came North. Finally, J…. sailed into our midst just in time to enjoy the Senior Year.

ETA: Here is BP's Eighth Grade photo from the 1958 book.

 

[CarlK90245]

Cubby has finally resolved this with no wiggle room. BP is not Miss X.

Cubby found the minutes to a 2008 Arden DE town meeting. BP was listed as one of the attendees, and she is quoted in the document invoking the memory of her sister, and asking the attendees to remember her.

Cubby then located BP's sister in the Find A Grave website, where it mentioned that she was also a graduate of the Tatnall School.

Incidentally, BP's sister was a sleuth, and was involved in locating the handgun that killed Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator Huey Long 50 years after the murder occurred.

Thanks Cubby. It's back to the yearbooks.

 

[Cubby]

You're welcome Carl. Without revealing too much personal information on BP and her family, I found it of great interest, later in life after her children were grown, BP's sister became a PI and found evidence in a case more than 50 years after it occured.

In a kind of a small world way that this family had ties to 'sleuthing', I would like to think the spirit of BP's sister might help lead us in the direction of identifying our Bear, DE jane doe.

 

[Cubby]

Forgot to mention, please let Hal know we have ruled out this possible so he need not spend any more time on researching BP.

thanks!

 

[CarlK90245]

Forgot to mention, please let Hal know we have ruled out this possible so he need not spend any more time on researching BP.

thanks!

Yes, I already did.

ETA: I am removing the YouTube video from my account, out of respect for BP.

 

[Cubby]

I went through the thread and had not noticed the following mentioned or discussed, at least in much detail.

From the NamUs link for this UID:

Body was in a 24" X 36" white cloth Laundry bag which bears the following visible markings;
Bag O - Storage
American Laundry
Dry Cleaning
EX4 5277

The EX4 5277 looks to me like a telephone number. It was common in the 1960's and even in the early 70's to use a letter versus a number for the first two digits of a telephone number. EX4-5277 would be 394-5277. If we can determine the area code for the time perhaps we can do some more research on this Laundry Facility and it's location to better narrow where our UID may have come from.

Maybe we can find this laundry service in a directory from 1967 or a little earlier that carries this 394-5277 telephone number to find an address and search from that angle.

 

[MargotKidder]

I went through the thread and had not noticed the following mentioned or discussed, at least in much detail.

From the NamUs link for this UID:

Body was in a 24" X 36" white cloth Laundry bag which bears the following visible markings;
Bag O - Storage
American Laundry
Dry Cleaning
EX4 5277

The EX4 5277 looks to me like a telephone number. It was common in the 1960's and even in the early 70's to use a letter versus a number for the first two digits of a telephone number. EX4-5277 would be 394-5277. If we can determine the area code for the time perhaps we can do some more research on this Laundry Facility and it's location to better narrow where our UID may have come from.

Maybe we can find this laundry service in a directory from 1967 or a little earlier that carries this 394-5277 telephone number to find an address and search from that angle.

I read something that it was called an Exchange Code in the 1960's. Are you sure that it stood for the first two numbers? If you google telephone exchange codes, you can find this site. I think its database was down, so I could not search it.

http://ourwebhome.com/TENP/TENproject.html

I have a theory though about the generic laundry bags. If you are a laundry business, how are you going to know which bag of laundry goes where? Not unless you mark the bag. While I think that American Laundry is the business who did the laundry, I bet the number on the bag were the individual businesses where they picked the laundry up. How else would you know where to drop off collected laundry or who it belonged to? Or am I wrong?

 

[mojave_red]

Many times, there's a removable tag on the laundry bag that details where it came from and / or where it is supposed to go.

 

[MargotKidder]

Well, there goes one theory, so if it is the specific business where the bagged belonged to, how can find its exchange code?

 

[CarlK90245]

I read something that it was called an Exchange Code in the 1960's. Are you sure that it stood for the first two numbers? If you google telephone exchange codes, you can find this site. I think its database was down, so I could not search it.

Yes, I remember when I was a child in the late 1960's the telephone prefixes were called exchange codes. Ours was "Eastgate 2", or EA2 (i.e., 322)

 

[mojave_red]

If you ~just~ assume the Delaware area code of 302, and you ~just~ translate the EX into 39, the "phone number" turns into 302-394-5277. Note that I remember doing exactly that back in the early 60s when our phone number went from DA3-something to 323-something.

If you then plug that invented phone number into google, and look for a reverse number database, it comes up as a landline in Wilmington, DE.

If you ask google to get directions from Wilmington, DE to Bear, DE, you'll find that Bear is 12 to 15 miles south of Wilmington.

Just some tantilizing tidbits. I didn't go any deeper to see who answers that phone number...