A Hint of a Secret Past

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In a scene that's enacted hundreds of times, a family member cleans out a deceased one's estate, only to come across the unexpected and the hint of a secret past.

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Skeletal remains found before modern forensics were many time left unidentified

Such was the case in June, 2011 when the Park County (Wyoming) Sheriff's office made a media release that a skull was found in a rural home. The deceased person supposedly got the skull in a trade under the assumption it came from a WWII concentration camp.

The skull was missing its lower jawbone and had a "penetrating injury" to the left temple area. 

​Dr. Weatherman, from the University of Wyoming Anthropology Department Human Remains Repository, after an examination determined it belonged to a male, over the age of 60 who probably came from the area of Romania, Hungary or Turkey in Eastern Europe.

The question remains, why would anyone want the skull of a man that was killed, possibly in a concentration camp. The person who could have supplied an answer, took it to the grave.

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Skeleton found in a trunk c.1992

​In 1992, Newel Sessions a resident of Thermopolis, Wyoming decided to open a padlocked, military footlocker that dated back to the 1930s. It had been in his shed since 1987. Sessions had acquired the shed from an acquaintance named John Morris in 1986, after Morris moved away. He left everything inside behind as well. 

Whether Sessions was a busy man, or just not the curious type, it had sat on his property for 5 years. Using a torch he removed the lock, and found the unexpected — it was a human skeleton wrapped in plastic, a belt and rotted grocery bag. The skeleton was missing the feet and lower legs.

When authorities examined the remains it was found the person had been shot in the chest and in the skull, where the bullet was still lodged. It was obvious it was a murder. Later it turned out the man had been shot through the eye.

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Footlocker where Joseph Mulvaney's remains were stashed for over 20 years

The rotted bag was from a Hy-Vee supermarket, which pointed to an Iowan source, possibly as far back as the 1950s. The .25-caliber bullet found in the skull began in 1908. The trunk and lock were likely made in the 1930s. 

Newel Sessions died in 2003, and it wasn't until 24 years after his discovery that the victim was given a name. He was Joseph Mulvaney, a veteran and railroad worker who disappeared in 1963.

Mulvaney was born on January 3, 1921, in Matton, Illinois. He joined the National Guard in 1941, and served in the 130th Infantry's 33rd Division. His service during WWII took him to Australia and the Philippines.

After the war he worked for railroad companies and eventually moved to California where he met Mary Alice McLees (1924-2009) who had served herself in the military during WWII.  The couple had three children of their own, however Mary had a son from a previous relationship named John David Morris, the very person who had given the shed to Sessions.

The Mulvaneys with their three children moved to Des Moines, Iowa in 1963. Shortly after the couple signed the paperwork on the sale of the house, Joseph Mulvaney disappeared and strangely was never reported missing. He was an only child, and his parents and grandparents were deceased. There was no one left from his family of origin to ask about his whereabouts.

Surprisingly Sessions was just going to bury the bones, but his wife Daisy told him he should call police.

Based on information provided by Sessions, authorities tracked down John Morris who in 1992 lived in Arlington, Texas. John Lumley, then sheriff for Hot Springs County interrogated Morris over the phone, and he said of the conversation: "He said he’d bought it in either Oklahoma or Iowa, he didn’t remember where. He had moved from town to town, state to state, and never opened it. He just kept it."

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Facial reconstruction of the skull found inside the trunk c.1993

Lumley traveled to Texas to question Morris further and said, "I got into his face about it a little bit. He related the same (information) and terminated the conversation. He invoked his rights under Miranda, and we ceased talking."

In an interview with a newspaper reporter Morris gave a similar story, saying he bought it at a yard sale in in Des Moines or Iowa Falls around the mid-1970s. This of course was prior to the discovery of the bones inside. Why he would have bought a foot locker and never opened it, was never explained. 

The strange case was aired on Unsolved Mysteries in 1993; it was titled Gabby's Bones. John Morris, identified as "Gabby" in the episode, did not participate in the recreations, but did sit down for an interview with his face obscured. 

During the show Lumley said he believed Morris knew more about the identity of the murdered man then he let on. Lumley was closer to the truth then he could have imagined, since authorities did not know the remains belonged to his stepfather. He was 16 years old when Mulvaney disappeared.

During the episode, a reconstruction of the victim was aired. Eventually it would lead to a vital clue in solving the mystery. One of the persons who saw the episode was Shelly Statler, Mulvaney's granddaughter. Later she would say the jawline on the reconstruction, was extremely similar to many people in her family, this plus the fact she was related to John Morris the original owner of the trunk.

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Joseph Mulvaney with his parents c.1940s (Source-FindAGrave)

After viewing the Unsolved Mysteries episode Shelly Statler and her mother Kathy, Joseph's oldest daughter, contacted law enforcement in Thermopolis. It wasn't until 2017, that DNA from the bones to Kathy were compared with a 99% match. It turned out that not knowing what happened to Joseph Mulvaney had put a great strain on the family. Mary Mulvaney told her children their father had left voluntarily.

Statler would go on to explain that her family believed Mary Alice Mulvaney shot her husband in April, 1963. Morris was 16 then (reported as a nephew and not a stepson to Joseph Mulvaney) and buried the body in her grandmother's back yard.

Sheriff Lumley believes Morris exhumed the skeleton, placed it in the trunk and took it with him when he moved to Wyoming. He explained the plastic Hy-vee bag inside trunk demonstrated the body was disinterred, since only paper bags were used when Mulvaney disappeared.

Statler said: "I don't think my grandparents had a very good marriage, and I know it affected my mom and her siblings growing up. My grandmother wasn't always easy to get along with. I do believe John Morris knows more than he is saying, but I don't believe he pulled the trigger."

In 2019, Morris then in his 70s, was contacted by a reporter, but he refused to comment on the story.

Mary Mulvaney died in 2009, and by then she had moved to Florida, and lost touch with her family for 10 years.  All three of her children passed away by 2022. 

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Identification of human remains 29 years later c.1977 (Source-Casper Star Tribune)

In 1977, a human skull was found in Teton County, Wyoming, and after 21 years of having gone missing it was identified as belonging to Duane Beckstrom, 23, who disappeared on October 26, 1956. Dentist used Army records to give him a name.

The skull had a bullet hole in the right temple from a .38-caliber bullet.

Beckstrom was a sergeant in the Marines, and had served in the Korean War. He made his home in South Dakota and after six days failed to return home. His car was found abandoned four miles from the skull.

One would assume he died by his own  hand, but did he? The war had ended 3 years before, and he left behind his parents and four siblings. Even young lives have secrets.

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A furnace is a strange place to misplace a skull

In 1960, a human skull was found in the furnace of a liquor store in New Britain, Connecticut. The police dug into the history of the building and discovered a medical student once lived there.  

The one time student was located, only now he was a doctor. He told authorities he had brought it home from medical school and misplaced it.  But of all the places to misplace a skull, why a furnace? So police had no choice but to accept the doctor's word that the skull was an anatomical specimen, since there was no one there to say differently.

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Gilbert F. Collie aka Gorilla Man, c.1932 prison records when death sentence was commuted to life

In 1934, two boys found a skull inside a large can on a dump near William Land in Sacramento. They were walking home from a fishing trip, and were kicking cans when they found one which was heavier than the others. The skull was taken home and played with by children in the neighborhood for two days, until the parents called the police.

Three years before a man's dismembered body was found close to where the skull was discovered. The coroner said the skull was that of a mature man, and the lower jaw was missing and only a few of the teeth were left in the upper mandible.

A detective believed the skull was at least 75 to 100 years old, and had nothing to do with what had been dubbed as the "Torso Murder" by the press.

The heinous crime came to light on August 19, 1931 when a rag picker found the body of a white man, whose hands indicated he was not a laborer. The body was severed at the neck and the upper part of the thighs. Four days after the torso was discovered the thighs were found at the dump, and a week later police found the rest of the legs. The one thing that was not found was the head, and thus the body remained unidentified.

Nine months before the skull was discovered, Gilbert Francis Collie, known as "Gorilla Man" escaped from the Mendocino State Hospital for the Criminal Insane. He was captured a few hours later. He was committed in 1932 after having been found insane while awaiting execution at San Quentin for the murder of Dale Slater, age 20.

When captured he had a number of hacksaw blades sewn in his clothing. He confessed to murdering and burning the shack of George Walker, and assuming his identity.

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Victoriano Corrales brings Sheriff Cox and another detective to the river where he dumped the bodies of 2 women he killed. c.1946 (Source-Oroville Mercury Register)

​Collie was also suspected in the "torso murder" north of Sacramento in the fall of 1930, and at least two other killings.

Collie tried to commit suicide after being sent to San Quentin.

Fifteen years after the discovery of the torso murder, a new hint was promised. Sheriff Don Cox went to look at old pictures taken of the crime scene. The pictures were of two quilts found with the dismembered body. The quilts were later destroyed, along with some old files in the basement of the district attorney's office.

Southern California police believed the body may have been that of Wade B. Hampton, who disappeared in Long Beach about the time of the discovery in 1931. A Long Beach woman in whose house Hampton roomed said she last saw him leave with Gilbert F. Collie, who then was 67 years old and serving two life sentences for murder in Folsom prison.

Cox was going to question the woman if the quilts in the pictures were the same ones she said she made herself, and which Collie had in his possession when he left her house with Hampton. Until then Collie denied all knowledge of Hampton's disappearance.

Strangely, there was a Wade B. Hampton who died in March, 1931 of pneumonia, who lived in Long Beach. There was nothing mysterious about his death. He was 66 years old, a laborer, married and with several adult children. 

Nothing came of Cox's visit, or at least nothing was published. The police never released any information as to the motive why Collie would have killed Hampton, and nothing more was mentioned after the story ran in 1946. Did the prosecutor decide that since Collie was already serving two life sentences, nothing more could come of it, or was the story about Hampton a ruse to cover some other angle to the murder?

What became of Gilbert Collie is unknown, beyond the fact that he was still behind bars in 1946. The native Texan, was married twice and had children. Whether he died in prison, or was ever paroled was never recorded. 

​This would not be the last time Sheriff Cox was involved in a torso murder. In 1949, he arrested Victoriano Corrales who confessed to throwing the mutilated body of Maria Pulido who he brought to the U.S. from Mexico, into the American River near Sacramento. This spot was near to his cabin where at different times he lived with two girls who he admitted he killed and dismember, and disposed of their bodies by throwing them in the river.

He regularly beat his wife Angelina, the mother of his six children and threatened to kill her.

In 1948, Corrales was executed at San Quentin Prison.

Sheriff Cox retired in 1960, and the identity of the dismembered man remained a mystery, as well as whose skull was in the can found by the boys.

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