The Mysterious Berry Picker

By M.P. Pellicer | Strange Than Fiction Stories
Police get strange reports, especially about dead bodies. Some of them pan out, but alot don't. So when they got a report of a dead body at Fresh Pond Road, the information was taken, and a few hours later a detective was sent out. 

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The mystery of who desecrated Bridget Curran's body was a mystery that was never solved c,1933

FLUSHING, QUEENS, 1933

The berry-picker who discovered the body hailed a coal truck driven by Robert Koch who drove to the precinct and told the police about the discovery.

Detective Herbert Graham from the Bayside Station went to a thicket south of North Hempstead Turnpike, and west of Fresh Pond Road in Flushing, Queens. He found the body, but even stranger the woman was naked with her clothing torn to pieces and scattered around her. The grass nearby was trampled. On the ground not far off was a white cotton underwear, torn violently, brown stockings, low black laced shoes, and some black silk pieces. She was lying face downward, she had a scar on the right knee, a cut over the right eye and the mouth was cut and bruised.

Her purse containing $53.79 lay near the body. Besides the money there were three religious medals and  two sets of rosary beads. There were also bills addressed to her from a dentist on Broadway. There was no evidence of foul play, but perhaps she'd been killed in a disguised way. If so, robbery was not the motive.

The medical examiner quashed any suspicion that she'd been murdered; because according to him she died of heart disease. Only four days before she'd been treated at the I.R.T. station at 104th St., Corona, Queens. He determined she'd been dead about 24 hours. This however could not explain why she was not wearing any clothes and her mouth was bruised.

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Was Bridget Curran scared to death?

The first clue to the dead woman's identity was when Jane Hanson went to the police station to report her landlady missing. After seeing the body, she confirmed the woman found in the thicket was Bridget L. Curran, 72, of 133 E. 97th St. Manhattan. She'd been living at this address for 30 years.

​Neighbors told police Mrs. Curran was known for fainting spells when it was hot.

It was unknown if Mrs. Curran had gone into the thicket to escape the heat of the day, or perhaps she felt death coming upon her and just wanted to lay down. But perhaps the biggest mystery of all was the identity of the berry picker who found her, and disappeared before police could question him. Did he know anything as to why she was unclothed; was he even a berry picker?

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