People and incidents
Penley, William K. (missing 1958 found 1959)
Documented recovery; OCR incomplete; a possible cemetery record noted but unconfirmed
A hunter found skeletal remains identified as William K. Penley after Penley had been missing since 1958. A cemetery record for a William K. Penley Jr. of Whiting, in Manchester Township, may or may not belong to the same man; the identification is unconfirmed and nothing in this entry rests on it.
Research note
The surviving clipping places the discovery in Manchester Township and appears to connect Penley with the Toms River area and an institutional or residential home. It also appears to give his age as about 40, mention periodic absences, and name a Trenton-area hunter, but the scan’s OCR is too damaged to establish the exact location, dates, names or circumstances responsibly. The source collection title supplies the missing-in-1958/found-in-1959 chronology.
This entry deliberately preserves those limits instead of converting uncertain letter shapes into facts. The original scan should be manually reread or located in a newspaper archive before further detail is asserted.
A cemetery record that may or may not be this man
A Find a Grave memorial for a William K. Penley Jr. records a birth on May 3, 1919, and a death on September 6, 1958, at age 39, with burial at Old Whiting Cemetery in Whiting — a village in Manchester Township, Ocean County, the township this entry’s clipping names. The surname and initial, the approximate age (39 against the clipping’s apparent “about 40”) and the township are the whole of the overlap.
Nothing else connects the two records. The memorial gives no cause of death, no discovery date, and no mention of a hunter, a search, or remains found in 1959; its marker line reads “Virginia CM2 USNR WWII,” pointing to wartime enlistment from Virginia and to a Construction Mechanic rating in the Naval Reserve, neither of which appears in the clipping. Its firm September 6, 1958 death date also sits awkwardly beside a case in which the man was missing and his remains not recovered until the following year, though a burial record may simply record a presumed or last-seen date. The identification is therefore recorded here as unconfirmed, and no statement elsewhere in this entry depends on it.
Sources
Unidentified clipping headed “Hunter Finds Skeleton [of] Missing Man,” apparently 1959; masthead, date, page and much of the text are illegible.
Find a Grave memorial 11793529, William K. Penley Jr., Old Whiting Cemetery, Whiting, New Jersey — inspected September 11, 2026. Gives birth and death dates, burial place, and a WWII Navy marker line. It carries no reference to this case, and the identification with the man in the clipping is unconfirmed.