Dead Bodies in a Buggy

Resurrectionists Surprised by a Policeman Last Night. They Run Off, Leaving Their Ghastly Plunder, The Dead Bodies of Two Women.

The Owner of the Abandoned Buggy May be Able to Throw Some Light on the Transaction.

The prisoners in the District jail last night heard, or might have heard, the wheels of a vehicle rattling over the gravel road near that prison. The vehicle was a buggy. There was a guard in advance of it and one in the rear. The driver was a rather good-looking man with whiskers. There was something in the buggy besides the driver, but whatever it was it was concealed from the gaze of the curious by a covering. The buggy and its guards came over the hills from the direction of the poor house. It was then after 9 o'clock, and the driver and guards hardly expected to meet anybody on the lonesome commons such a dark night, but in order to be on the safe side they kept a sharp lookout.

The Surprise

The buggy had not gone far over the hill before it was heard by Policeman Clinton, who was aware that cadavers were often removed from that desolate place known as potters' field and suspected that the vehicle contained a dead body. The officer quietly stepped to the side of the road where he could not easily be seen to await the approach of the buggy. The officer saw the two guards in the positions mentioned above and the driver, looking, he said, like a physician and became satisfied that they were lawbreakers. When the buggy reached a position directly opposite the officer he made a rush for the vehicle. The driver used his whip and the animal started to gallop off. The officer grabbed for and caught hold of one of the reins. The animal became frightened and nearly upset the buggy. While the officer was struggling with the horse the driver jumped from the buggy and escaped. In the meantime the two guards had run off. When the officer examined the buggy he discovered.

The Dead Bodies of Two Women,

one white and the other colored. The bodies were in a kneeling position, and the driver must have sat-in the buggy with a leg on either side of the corpses to keep them from tumbling out. The officer drove the buggy to the morgue and there placed the remains upon cooling boards. The colored body is supposed to be that of Mary E. Hawkins, who was buried in potter's field yesterday. The remains of the white woman had not bee identified this morning. She had a very pleasant face and was evidently a refined woman at some time.

The buggy looks like it may be the property of a physician. The horse is about seven years old. It is a bay, with white spots on its body.

This is the third time within a year that grave robbers have made their escape from within a few feet of the police.

The horse and buggy and the spoke used in opening the grave had not been called for this afternoon.

The horse was seen this morning by a colored man who claimed that he knew the owner of it. He said that it belonged to an East Washington physician.

There were no marks on the bodies to show that hooks had been used in raising them from their graves and for that reason the officers thought that the bodies were obtained in potter's field. They will be reinterred there.

Source: The Evening Star

Publication date: December 21, 1889