Unidentified people
The Quicklime Body (1935)
Unresolved homicide
Berry picker John Broome found an unidentified man, about 30, shot and buried with quicklime near Chatsworth on August 15, 1935.
Discovery and evidence
Broome was picking huckleberries when circling buzzards drew him to a grave only about eight inches deep. The unclothed body had been covered with quicklime, but the head and shoulders remained exposed. Good-quality clothing was found nearby. Investigators also recorded seven nickels, a Philadelphia trolley token, an unmarked handkerchief, and Philadelphia newspapers dated May 21 and July 31, 1935.
An autopsy found that a bullet entered below the left ear, fractured neck vertebrae, and exited through the ear lobe. The absence of powder marks suggested that material may have been held between the gun and the victim. Officials believed he had been dead at least a week and described the killing as a gang-style execution.
Conflicting reconstruction
An early United Press report said Burlington County detective Ellis H. Parker believed the man had been brought into the woods alive about three days earlier, citing fresh blood on shrubs and a pool roughly fifty feet from the grave. That reconstruction conflicts with the later estimate that the body had been there at least a week. Both claims are retained as contemporary investigative opinions, not settled facts.
Henry Charlton Beck later recalled visiting the scene of a Pine Barrens gang killing with Bill Farrand and finding a piece of scalp in the brush. Local researcher Guy Thompson has proposed that Beck was describing this case. The timing and circumstances fit, but the identification remains an informed inference. No reliable identification of the victim or prosecution has been located.
Sources
United Press, Chatsworth dateline, August 15, 1935, printed in the Imperial Valley Press, p. 1; Courier-Post, August 16, 1935; additional contemporary reports transcribed in the NJ Pine Barrens forum thread “Pine Barren History Shorts,” p. 2; Henry Charlton Beck, More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, “Lost in the Woods: One Railroad.” Newspaper wording has been paraphrased.