Saturday, February 16, 2013

The bones of Morses Pond

Sniffing out a story down on Shore Road.
I've got a nose for sniffing out stories, and when I heard there were bones on the shores of Morses Pond (that's MoPo to locals), I needed to investigate.

A good local news story is worth almost as much as a juicy bone, and here I had two in one. And not just a bone, but bones, plural.

So I overcame my usual reluctance to trek past the bend in Shore Road. That's where I would turn around, dissuaded, with good reason, by the German Shepherds who would hurl themselves at the chain link fence at my approach.  Today, however, no such fright occurred, and I made it to the end of the road.

Being a news hound, I diligently keep up with the Wellesley police log as well as its building permits. My ears immediately perked up at this report in the February 14 Wellesley Townsman:
"On Feb. 7, at 1:34 p.m., Officer Christopher Cunningham was dispatched to Shore Road after a contractor working on a residence reported finding several bones beneath a cement slab. The bones were transported to the state medical examiner's office, where several doctors examined them."

What! I read on.

"It was determined they were the bones of an animal that had been butchered."

First, I thought, I haven't smelled a good pig roast ever since I was a pup, when I lived in South Carolina. If there had been a roast recently, I would have made it my business to know about it, and be there.

Second, I remembered that a house on Shore Road needed to tear down a connector between two houses that made it a two-family (again, thanks to the Townsman, this time for its building permit listing in January). This fact gave me the impetus to overcome my fears of being the German Shepherds' next meal.

I noticed indeed some construction equipment down the end of the street, as well as the missing house-to-house connector.  Checking back into town records, I read that the buildings were joined some time in the 1950s. I would guess that must have been where and when the bloody deed occurred.  But why? And to whom? And wasn't there a lucky dog around to chew on those bones?