Mary Phillips at Atsion (1880)

What was reported

One brief says the body of a woman named Phillips was found near Atsion on an uncertain date ending in “21.” It reports an investigation concluded she had not been murdered and attributed her death to self-strangulation after drinking. A second item, datelined Atsion Junction on the New Jersey Southern Railroad, calls her Mary Phillips, locates her body in a cranberry patch, and says her neck was broken. Because the snippets provide neither the evidence nor an inquest result, these should be treated as competing early reports rather than a settled cause of death.