Love Secrets Of Honey’s Murder Murder Most Foul 55Love Secrets Of
Honey’s Murder
W
ILSON EDELMAN was a
rare breed among Americans- he liked walking. Every
morning he would set out to indulge in
his pedestrian pastime, for which today
he would risk arrest in some US states
on a charge of suspicious behaviour.
Sundays he walked even farther than
on weekdays. And always he walked
alone, which might cast even greater
suspicion over him.
At 6 o’clock on a fine Sunday
morning in October 1927, Wilson
set out on his jaunt from his home at
Woodbury, New Jersey. The air was
fresh and bracing, demanding a brisk
step along the narrow road to Wenonah.
He had gone about four miles when
he came to the concrete bridge over
Mantua Creek, a narrow, sluggish
stream running between rocky banks
covered with tangled undergrowth.
Wilson, aglow from his exercise,
paused at the bridge. He leaned against
the parapet, listening to the birds and
the occasional rustle in the undergrowth,
and watching the ripples in the stream.
It was one of those days, he reckoned,
when it was good to be alive. But not
nearly so good to be dead...
Wilson looked around him, suddenly
uneasy. The gravel at one side of the
road where he was standing seemed to
have been disturbed, as if by scuffling
feet.
He peered closer. There were dark
spots in the dirt. They seemed to lead
from the centre of the road to the
parapet of the bridge.
Curious, he leaned over the bridge
railing, scanning the creek below. His
news travel in the countryside early on
Sunday mornings, a small crowd of
onlookers had already gathered on the
bridge.
With my two colleagues I climbed
down the embankment, just as Wilson
Edelman had done, to examine the
body. I can remember her to this
day. Even in death she was strikingly
beautiful. She was about five feet three
inches tall and weighed about nine
stone. Her black hair was long and
curled and hung below her shoulders.
She wore a pink dress and a black
coat and black stockings and on her left
foot was a black shoe – the right shoe
was missing.
She had been shot twice. One bullet
had passed through her head, entering
the left temple and exiting from the
right. The other bullet had pierced her
body slightly above her heart. It had
passed through the body and lodged
against a metal stay in her corset.
This bullet, of .32 calibre, fell from
her clothes when her body was moved.
Her skull had been fractured by heavy
blows and her once pretty features had
been mutilated by further blows. Her
face was blackened by congested blood
caused by strangulation with two strands
of insulated copper wire, such as was
used in wiring car ignition systems.
They had been drawn so tightly around
her throat that they had cut deeply into
her flesh.
She wore a double rope of imitation
pearls – a touch of vanity in the maze
of tragedy – which pitifully circled
her throat beside the wires which had
choked out her life.
Beside the crumpled body was, of
all things, a box of fried oysters, still
unopened, evidently thrown from the
bridge with the body. In the pocket of
the black coat we found a bank book
which showed that a deposit of three
dollars was made the previous night
in the Christmas Savings Club of a
Woodbury bank. The bank book bore
the name of Louis Sarlo. Detective Scott
looked up at the crowd and shouted,
“Louis Sarlo. That name mean anything
to anyone?”
Then someone in the crowd cried
out, “It’s Louis Sarlo’s girl! It’s Honey
Sarlo!”S
he was in fact Rose Sarlo, the
17-year-old daughter of a Woodbury
butcher. To everyone in Woodbury sheAbove, 17-year-old victim “Honey”
Sarlo. Background image – Mantua
Creek where her body was dumpedgaze swept first one bank, then the
other. On the bank that was closer to
him was a brightly coloured object.
Focusing, Wilson had no difficulty in
identifying it. It was a crumpled human
body – the body of a young woman.
Wilson clambered down the
embankment beside the bridge to verify
his discovery. Then he ran to the nearest
farmhouse and phoned the police at
Woodbury.
That Sunday morning I wasn’t up
and about nearly as early as Wilson
Edelman. I was having my breakfast, in
fact, and looking forward to a leisurely
Sunday at home, when the phone rang.
It was Detective Andrew Scott of
Woodbury. A body had been found
under the Mantua Creek Bridge...
I left my half-finished scrambled
eggs and instead scrambled to my
car. Detective Scott was already at
the bridge, with Trooper I. C. Smith.
Astonishingly, for one wonders howWhen a teenage
Sunday-school
teacher was found
brutally murdered no
one could understand
how – or why – it
had happened. But
when cops probed
her diary, a different
picture of the victim
emerged – and so too
did clues as to the
identity of her killer...Case recalled by
Jacob Tryon
Sheriff of Gloucester County,
New Jersey