The Bodies of Five Infants, in a Trunk in the Attic

Are some secrets better left unknown?

Photo by Marie Despeyroux on Unsplash

I spent most of my life learning people’s secrets, whether they wanted me to or not. I was a reporter, who sometimes did crime. The way it worked in crime reporting was that the family of the victim was eager to talk with you; the cops were willing to talk, but not necessarily to tell you anything; and the wife of the perpetrator tried to close the door on your foot.

That’s one of the things I remember about the dead babies in the attic. The wife of the man I was certain was involved had tried to close the door on my foot to get rid of me, and I, anticipating just such a move, had placed my foot in the way.

 I remember it clearly, though not necessarily accurately:  A working man’s house, in a small depressed town in rural Pennsylvania and, if I am remembering right, me not at the front door, but on the back porch.  I also remember that there was snow on the ground, but that was probably a reflection of physical misery, not fact.  The dateline of that story is October 11, it was too early for snow, perhaps what is imprinted on my brain as snow was freezing rain. I had mixed feeling about reporting and my memories are often tied up with getting lost and damp motels with insubstantial doors and how cold my feet were and how much I wanted it to be over and to be back home.

This is an old story, by the way.  It breaks in 1980 when I am the New York correspondent for The Washington Post.  Washington is an hour and a half closer to the scene of the crime than New York, it would make more sense to send somebody from the home office, but my editor feels this story has my name on it, so off I go.

Gallitzin is nine miles west of Altoona, with a population of 2,413. It’s a has-been town. I say that with expertise and affection having grown up in a has-been town and driven through hundreds of them.  Gallitzin had been prosperous, in the ’20s and ’30s, when there was coal mining and railroad work, but now the stores on Main Street are boarded up and the paint on the houses is peeling. I would say it reeks of despair, but for despair, there has to have recently been hope.                           

What I know, arriving in Gallitzin is this: A 76-year-old woman named Stella Williamson, who never married, has died, leaving a note saying that the bodies of five infants can be found in a trunk in the attic of her home. The bodies are largely decomposed, but three, according to police, are clearly homicides. The bodies are wrapped in newspapers dating between 1925 to 1933, during which time, I calculate, Stella would have been between 19 and 29. The police are not releasing the name of the man Stella says was the father. He is in extremely poor health, they say, and incompetent to aid an investigation.

Can I take a moment here, for the sake of the young reporters among you, and offer my tip for small-town reporting? It’s just four words, but they’re invaluable. You find the diner, order a piece of pie, and even if it’s the worst pie you’ve tasted, you say, “Is this pie homemade?” It worked wonderfully in a town in Missouri where a half dozen people shot the town bully in cold blood in the middle of the day, but in no hope Gallitzin, I don’t spot a diner.   

The upside of reporting in a town of 2,413, however, is that it’s not hard to find people who know the players. I learn that Stella Williamson’s family ran a boarding house and that Stella was a tall, heavyset girl who “was never killed with beauty”. Her father was a quiet man who worked for the railroad. Her mother tracked the unwed mothers in town and was so ferocious that people crossed the street to avoid her.

Stella is a B student, according to school records, but she leaves school after finishing only eighth grade, when she turns sixteen – old for that grade, particularly for a good student.  Stella remains at home. She dates a man for a few years when she is a teenager and they speak of marriage, but they are of different religions, their families oppose the marriage, so the man goes into the Navy and when he gets out, he marries someone else.

That’s the guy, I think.  That man has got to be the father of those five babies.

I call the home of Stella’s long-ago boyfriend. The woman who answers the phone hangs up on me as soon as she hears the word “reporter” which proves to me I’ve found the right man.

 I’m also wondering what this woman, who I assume is the man’s wife, is going through now.  They’ve been married for about forty years; I know from my reporting they have no children.  Then she finds out he fathered five children with another woman and she can’t even scream, “You sonofabitch, how could you?” Or maybe she can, but she is not going to get any answers.  The police, after all, are suggesting dementia.     

Still, the affair went on for ten years and resulted in five pregnancies. I cannot believe that this man knew nothing about the births and deaths. Even though the wife has hung up on me, as a reporter I am obligated to go over to her house and try to get her to talk.

No, let me be straight; I want to know what happened.  In the cold Pennsylvania snow/ sleet/ freezing rain, whatever it is, I go over and do my shameless, “But, I came all the way from New York.” 

And naturally, the poor woman, who is probably in her 70s, tries to close the door on my foot. I wonder how long we stand there, locked in journalistic combat. It’s ritualistic. It’s not like you’re not a robber breaking in, you’re just trying to get someone to talk to a stranger in the worst moments of their life; to see if you can get a better story than the competition and do a better job than the cops.

But I can’t stay on the porch forever. I step away, the wife slams the door, and the next day, I go to the press conference to hear what the cops and the pathologist have to say.

They report that the infants were up to one year in age; that in two cases the cause of death could not be determined; but that for the other three, it was strangulation. The strangulation was “performed with a piece of cloth that was wrapped around the baby’s neck and used in a noose fashion.” A man has been named in Stella’s note but he is not implicated in the deaths.

 Then finally, the police release Stella’s note. It’s a great note, the kind of note for which every reporter in the room would willingly stand for two hours in freezing rain:

 “Today, I started to bleed and I want to make things right if anything should happen to me. In the attic in an old trunk, you will find babies I had to [name deleted] 30 years or more How I got away with it I don’t no [sic], but I did so I don’t want anyone else to be blamed for something they know nothing about. This is one reason I could never marry anyone else. I have lived a good life sense [sic] , so as God is my judge this is the truth. Please forgive me if you can. Stella.”

And, an added note, at the bottom: “He never wanted me. Only something to play with and I was a fool in his hands.”

 That’s it: I have my story: the lonely spinster, the abandoned plaything of a married man. I go back to my motel, file, and head to the airport. Then it’s on to the next one. The headmistress of a fancy private school will be tried for putting four bullets in her diet doctor lover in a month. John Lennon will be murdered in December. 

But I never forget the story and now and then I wonder about it: Why did Stella Williamson keep getting pregnant? What did the father of the babies know? What was the role of Stella’s mother, who I always felt was a force in the murders, no matter what Stella said in her note?     

But mostly, I think about the wife who tried to close the door on my foot. The wife who gets a knock on the door and learns that the husband who is now half-dead had a secret life. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely secret; perhaps the wife had had suspicions about another woman over the years, but nobody could expect this: Five murdered babies in a trunk in an attic.

And you can cry, yell, demand to know what your husband knew. You can confront him all you want. You’re never going to get any answers. You’ll just go back to making him meals and wiping his ass and changing his diapers.

I’m not saying the wife would have been better off not knowing, though that may be true. I’m not saying the police should never have told her. They were investigating a crime, it was their job to talk to the wife, and of course, she had a right to know.

But then what happened? That’s the story I always go back to. The cops leave, the wife turns to her demented husband. Freeze frame. The blockbuster movie that opened nationwide ends, the audience leaves. The wife’s movie begins.