It's 1907. The body of a well-dressed young man is found on the property of a very wealthy private estate in New Rochelle. There is a bullet hole behind the left ear, and a revolver is found nearby. His pockets have been turned inside out. There are bootprints around the body, yet the heels of the victim's boots have been torn off and are not found.
The body is never identified. Local police close the case, and file it as a suicide.
The owner of the estate is a very well-respected banker, philanthropist, and sportsman. Several years earlier he was implicated--and then exonerated--in a high-profile international cheating scandal.
All of the above is 100% true, BTW, and is archived in the New York Times' Time Machine for 1907. But then things went quiet. Can anyone here come up with a theory as to what happened? The possibility of blackmail or witness tampering is fairly obvious--but it there was foul play, why would it take place on the grounds of the rich man's estate? And what about the boot heel mystery?
The body is never identified. Local police close the case, and file it as a suicide.
The owner of the estate is a very well-respected banker, philanthropist, and sportsman. Several years earlier he was implicated--and then exonerated--in a high-profile international cheating scandal.
All of the above is 100% true, BTW, and is archived in the New York Times' Time Machine for 1907. But then things went quiet. Can anyone here come up with a theory as to what happened? The possibility of blackmail or witness tampering is fairly obvious--but it there was foul play, why would it take place on the grounds of the rich man's estate? And what about the boot heel mystery?
