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PublishedJuly 17, 2022
Chapter 9: The life and times of James Lowell
James Lowell served in Company G, which never saw active fighting, but didn’t have it easy. Among the places its men guarded were the Seneca Quarries in western Maryland, where the stone for the original Smithsonian building came from.
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PublishedJuly 10, 2022
Chapter 8: Getting ready for Lowell’s inquest
Interest in the case ran so high that when copies of the Journal began rolling off the press, hordes waited outside the building for a chance to buy one for 2 cents. Some stood patiently for hours since the editor declared that subscribers would get their papers first.
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PublishedJuly 3, 2022
Chapter 7: A big scoop for the Journal
Arriving at the jail, the city marshal told James M. Lowell he’d get the best accommodations possible and brought him to the northwestern corner cell, where the local newspaper editor noticed that the bones collected on Switzerland Road — thought to be the remains of Lowell’s wife — were still bound up in a mat in the corner, some of them protruding into the air.
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PublishedJune 26, 2022
Chapter 6: Rounding up a suspected killer
After James Lowell stepped down off a wagon, where he was loading rags at the Munroe’s Paper Mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, Officer E.D. Wiggin of Lewiston handed him a copy of that day’s Boston Journal, which carried an account of the discovery of the headless skeleton in Lewiston.
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PublishedJune 19, 2022
Chapter 5: Lizzie’s mother has a strange dream
Though the dream had no impact on the discovery of the skeleton, it likely contributed to the stir caused by the find in a spot eerily similar to what Sarah Burton imagined.
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PublishedJune 12, 2022
Chapter 4: The Lowells’ troubled marriage
In the first hours after the grisly discovery of a body in the woods, the Journal tracked down a few people who remembered Lizzie and her husband, James M. Lowell.
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PublishedJune 5, 2022
Chapter 3: The day Lizzie Lowell vanished
When the Lewiston Evening Journal reported the skeleton of a woman had been found near the Switzerland Road, women in town “said with one accord: ‘I think that’s Mrs. Lowell’s remains.’”
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PublishedMay 29, 2022
Chapter 2: ‘Skeleton of a Woman Found’
Observers quickly discerned that by the standards of the day, the woman had been well-dressed, with beads and silk lace trimming her sleeves down to her wrists and extending over her shoulders to cover down to her waist.
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PublishedMay 22, 2022
Serialized mystery: The Headless Skeleton
In the fall of 1873, a Lewiston woodcutter stumbled upon a headless skeleton and a tattered black dress lying beside some pine trees near the city’s most romantic drive. This series, published in weekly chapters on Sundays, tells the story.
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PublishedMay 22, 2022
Chapter 1: The Mystery of the Headless Skeleton
Let’s go back in time to a crisp Wednesday in mid-October of 1873, beside a small clump of pine trees along the most romantic drive in Lewiston, a mile away from anyone’s home.
1873 mystery
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