A grim murder mystery unfolded in New York City in June 1910 when police were called to remove a rope-bound trunk left in the hallway of a house on Goerck Street.
No one in the building knew who owned it. The janitress, suspicious of the abandoned trunk, asked officers to take it away. When it was opened at the nearest police station, detectives found the body of a man packed inside, bent double with his head forced against his knees.
Within an hour, the victim was identified as Moses Sachs, a jewelry salesman who had vanished the previous afternoon while carrying $2,000 worth of jewelry.
His sons had only just gone to police headquarters to report him missing when the trunk was discovered.
Find Body in Trunk
NEW YORK CITY. — A new murder mystery developed Saturday with the finding of the body of an unidentified man packed in a trunk in the hallway of a house on Goerck Street. The police took the trunk and body in charge and a detail of detectives immediately began an investigation.
An hour after the discovery, the body was identified as that of Moses Sachs, a jewelry salesman. Sachs had been missing since 1 o’clock Saturday afternoon. It was only a short time before the body was found that his two sons had gone to police headquarters to report that their father had left home Saturday afternoon with $2,000 worth of jewelry in his possession and had not returned.
The police found that the rope bound trunk containing the body had been left at 51 Goerck Street yesterday morning by an expressman. The janitress, not knowing to whom it belonged, asked the police to remove it.
The trunk was taken to the nearest police station where the body, bent double with head against knees, was discovered in the trunk.
Sachs was formerly proprietor of a Houston Street jewelry store. Up to noon the police had no clue to the circumstances under which he had been murdered.
Source: The Barre Daily Times. Barre, Vt. June 20, 1910.
