The Regents Park Mystery
A contractor was found murdered in a thicket, his body showing signs of a struggle and an attempt at concealment.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A deliberate and cleverly planned murder was revealed this morning when the body of contractor James A. Frace, with three bullet holes in it, was found in the underbrush a quarter-mile north of Regents Park. Three empty cartridges, evidently ejected from an automatic revolver, were found twenty feet away from the body, and, judging from the appearance of the underbrush, Frace was dragged into the thicket by his murderers in an attempt to conceal the crime. A trail of blood stains leads from the spot where the cartridges were picked up to where the body was found. Mr. Frace, 55, had been missing since Wednesday night when he was last seen leaving a streetcar. That he was enticed into the woods is the current theory, as he was found a mile from his home, fully clothed with his watch and money still on his person, ruling out robbery as a motive. Detectives Milone, Fackler, Ashby, and Packaba discovered the body after a systematic search of the area.
“A trail of blood stains leads from the spot where the cartridges were picked up to where the body was found.”
Regents Park, once a rural area outside Tacoma where a contractor could be lured to a lonely death, has been absorbed into the city's suburban sprawl. Murders involving 'unsolved' or mysterious circumstances remain a haunting staple of urban memory, reminding us that even quiet neighborhoods have dark histories.
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