At first glance, the death of 19-year-old Maynard Bixby might have appeared to be a terrible railroad accident.
His body was found on the Michigan Central railroad tracks near Orion, Michigan, mutilated in a way that could easily suggest he had been struck by a train.
But local police quickly began looking past the obvious explanation. Something about the scene did not sit right with them.
Bixby had been seen alive only hours earlier. On Saturday night, he was out with friends, apparently in ordinary spirits. Shortly after midnight, he left the group, drew out his watch, and remarked that he was going home.
When his body was discovered, the watch was missing.
That absence mattered. So did another discovery made near the scene: a blood-stained stone. Together, the missing watch and the stained stone raised a grim possibility.
Police began to suspect that Bixby had not wandered onto the tracks and died by accident. Instead, they believed he may have been attacked, killed elsewhere or nearby, and then placed on the railroad line in an attempt to hide the crime beneath the violence of a passing train.
See Attempt To Hide Crime
ORION, Michigan. — Murder is the theory of the local police officers in the case of Maynard Bixby, whose mutilated body was found on the Michigan Central railroad tracks near Orion, Michigan.
Bixby, who was 19 years of age, lived with his parents in Orion. He was with friends when last seen. He left them shortly after midnight Saturday night, pulling out his watch as he departed and saying that he was going home.
The watch was not found in the clothing on the body, and this fact, coupled with the finding of a blood-stained stone in the neighborhood of the tragedy, furnishes the evidence of foul play upon which the police are working.
Source: Eagle River Review. Eagle River, Wis. September 2, 1904.
