True Crime Historian presents yesterday's news, stories of the scandals, scoundrels, and scourges of the past

told through vintage newspaper accounts in the golden age of yellow journalism.

Episode 451 begins in the summer of 1902 when a woman's mutilated body is pulled from the Morris Canal, and the trail leads to a blood-soaked

missionaries flat in Manhattan. The suspect? William Hooper Young, grandson of Mormon patriarch

Brigham Young, whose notebook bore the chilling phrase, Blood Atonement.

This is a rich episode about the strange descent of a scholar-turned-tramp,

and the murder that made headlines thunder with scandal, scripture, and slaughter.

I'm true crime historian, and for your horror and indignation I give you a corpse in the

Morris Canal, the work of the Mormon butcher. Jersey City, New Jersey.

September 18, 1902. The spot where Anna Pulitzer's body was found is a lonely one, and it is not

strange that the murderers were able to rid themselves of their burden unobserved. What is known as the

Morris Canal Cut is about a mile long and connects the Hackensack and Passaic rivers. At one end is the

drawbridge over the Hackensack River, andic rivers. At one end is the drawbridge over the Hackensack River,

and at the other a draw bridge over the Passaic River. The Plank Road over which a trolley line

operates cars from Jersey City to Newark runs every few minutes during the day and every 15 minutes during the night.

At the Hackensack River end is the house of James Murray,

superintendent of the New Jersey Zink Works.

It stands on the canal and is the only house nearby.

The cut runs through the Hackensack Meadowland,

and although there is a good deal of traffic over the road,

it is rare that anyone travels it on foot, especially by night.

The water in the cut at high tide is about five feet deep, but at low tide all but an inch or so

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