Lou’s View – May 8, 2014
Dead Ahead
By Lou Bernard
I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’s been almost half an hour since I wrote about dead bodies being found in the woods.
Seriously, there are a lot of stories like that back in the old days. I turn up tons of old newspaper articles about human remains being discovered in the forests of Clinton County. Before, say, about 1950, it was apparently impossible to go for a walk in the forest without stumbling across three or four skeletons. They were like dandelions back then.
And I haven’t written one of these columns in a while. So let me rectify that.
The article comes from the Clinton Republican, October 27, 1897: “Mystery Near Renovo.”
It began on a Friday afternoon; October 22, 1897, to be exact. Local man Walter Shires had been out in the forest hunting ginseng, which was apparently a thing people did back in 1897. North of the railroad on the mountain, about a mile and a half west of Renovo, Shires discovered a body.
Shires was a responsible sort of guy. I’ve written about people before who found human remains—Generally, the authorities get contacted, though judging by some of these old articles, that was nowhere near anyone’s first priority. It’s comparable to people finding a skeleton these days, and taking a selfie with it before calling the cops. Shires, however, did the responsible thing, and immediately hiked back into Renovo to notify the police.
J.J. Wentzel was Justice of the Peace and acting coroner at the time, and he went out to see the scene. Criminal investigation wasn’t exactly CSI: Renovo back in those days, but everything seemed obvious enough. The body was mostly a skeleton—You don’t want any further details, trust me. He was wearing what had once been a good black suit, new shoes, a straw hat, and a black tie.
He had no money and no identification. Any money he’d had most likely had been spent on the two bottles of whiskey found near the body, one empty and one full. In the right hand was a Smith and Wesson .32, which took five bullets. It had four bullets and an empty shell. So you do the math here.
I’ve had times when I’ve been pretty depressed in my life, but I’d never kill myself before finishing my whiskey.
Eventually, the body was identified as Steven Kelzar, a Hungarian immigrant who worked in the mines up in Bitumen. Kelzar was known to be dating a local girl who worked at the hotel of D.M. May, in Renovo, and he would make frequent visits to her. The two of them had agreed to be married.
A few months previously, according to the girl, Kelzar had visited her to ask if she would marry him immediately. She asked for a few more weeks. He left after agreeing to wait. (“And kids, that is how I met your mother.”)
Kelzar visited another local woman, gave her ten dollars to deliver to his girl, and then headed home. There is no indication why he didn’t just hand over the ten dollars immediately, instead of going through a messenger, though it’s probable that he spent the rest of his money on the gun and whiskey. But that was the last night Kelzar was heard from—He never arrived back in Bitumen.
There is no record of his girlfriend reporting him missing, or even getting very panicky over it, which suggests that Kelzar was way more into the relationship than she was. Wentzel discovered all this, and then closed the investigation. Kelzar was most likely buried in an unmarked grave near Renovo.
Those were the exciting days, when you could just stroll around in the woods of Clinton County and reliably find a skeleton. People lived exciting lives back then. Last time I went for a walk in the forest, I saw a few squirrels, a couple of pretty rocks. And that was about it. My wife expressed her gratitude that we didn’t see any skeletons. Some people have no sense of adventure.
