It was the turkey that first got the janitor thinking, murder.

On Thanksgiving Day in 1849, the janitor had a succulent bird sitting on his kitchen table.

He had here he was, hacking with a hatchet at the brick wall of a latrine in the basement of Harvard Medical School.

He wanted to be at home feasting, but he could not eat with all those clues nipping at his conscience.

A Harvard grandee had gone missing, and the janitor thought he knew where.

Unfortunately, there were five layers of brick to the vaults, and a hatchet just wasn't the right tool.

So the janitor quit after 90 minutes, cold and hungry.

The next morning, he dropped by a local foundry to borrow a hammer, a better chisel, and a crowbar.

To start working on a new water main, he clamped.

Then it was down to the latrine again.

Several hours later, he finally opened a hole in the inner-most layer of brick.

He held his lantern up, peering into the darkness.

But a draft kicked up and almost snuffed the flame.

You can imagine the smells bursting forth as well.

Still, the janitor widened the hole and tried again, shielding the lantern as he reached it inside.

It was a moment right out of Edgar Allan Poe.

He saw mostly the nasty things you'd expect to see in a latrine.

But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed one additional thing.

In the center of the pit, blowing a dull white, sat a human pelvis.

The only question was, whose pelvis was it?

After all, this was a medical school.

There were corpses everywhere.

...