A grisly discovery on an Illinois Central freight car left residents near Milan, Tennessee, struggling to explain what had happened.
The armless and headless body of a well-dressed young man was found wedged beneath a freight car at Sharon, with nothing on him to reveal his name.
The condition and placement of the body deepened the mystery. Some believed it could not have happened by accident, while others wondered how the train had passed inspection points without anyone noticing the remains.
With no papers, no identifying marks, and no clear explanation, the unknown man was taken to a Sharon undertaking establishment while the strange case awaited answers.
Headless Body
MILAN, Tennessee. — News reached here this morning of the finding of an armless and headless body of a man at Sharon, a few miles north of here at an early hour last night by a freight conductor of the Illinois Central Railroad.
The body was found on the rods of a freight car. It was the body of a white man, and there were no marks or papers by which the identity could be shown. From the appearance of the body, it must have been a young man about 25 years of age, and well dressed.
It was wedged in between the car and the rods, and the option of many is that the body was placed there, as it seems that it would be almost impossible for the head and arms of a man to be severed from the body and not crush it otherwise.
The people here cannot imagine how the body passed through Jackson in that position, as trains are inspected there, and then wonder why it was overlooked at the other points along the route.
The body is in an undertaking establishment at Sharon.
Source: The Commercial. Union City, Tenn. March 20, 1908.
