Human Skull Discovered Sitting on Fireplace Mantle for Over a Year and Sporting Sunglasses Positively Identified as Man Missing in Morgan County TN

October 27, 2020, 03:55 PM

I love it!

Wartburg sits just west of...

wait for it...
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You can't make this up...
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Really you can't
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. "Frozen Head State Park".

For a little perspective. Wartburg is the County Seat of Morgan County but has a population of less than 1000. Some damn fine folks up there... if they know you. I think David Allen Coe may have written a song about them.

Let me just say I have been to Wartburg and leave it at that.

October 27, 2020, 04:43 PM

irreverent

quote:
Originally posted by 10X-Shooter:
It’s not so surprising if you met some of the drug heads in the hills of Tennessee. Remember a few years back when there was a alcohol “butt chugging” scandal at University of Tennessee Knoxville? No one I’d associate with ever thought sticking alcohol in your ass was good for anything up to and including getting drunk.

Um..what?? Care to elaborate?

Already reeling over the shades on a human skull sitting on a mantel like it’s no big (we’ve done that with pumpkins, etc, but Jesus..)

October 27, 2020, 04:48 PM

sigfreund

quote:
Originally posted by cslinger:
WHO THE HELL FINDS A RANDOM HUMAN SKULL AND SAYS “IMA PICK THAT UP.”

A guy did that some years ago in my county and brought it in a bag to the law enforcement office where I was a dispatcher at the time.

He could have left it where it was and reported it, of course, but it was deep in the woods and he may have been uncertain he could find it again. Or perhaps he thought it wasn’t a good idea to leave it there for someone else to pick up and put on his mantlepiece.

The skull turned out to be that of someone who had been missing for a couple of years. There were suspicions of foul play in connection with his disappearance, but nothing could be determined. Despite a large scale search of the area, nothing else was located other than a few scraps of clothing in a swampy area at the bottom of a slope from where the skull was found—not even another single bone.

Another time a fisherman(?) discovered some bones washing out from a riverbank that he identified as human. As I recall he had some with him when he reported it at the LE office. Those turned out, as best could be determined, to have been from a burial of a soldier, or more likely a veteran wearing an old Army coat, probably in the mid-nineteenth century.

October 27, 2020, 05:19 PM

HayesGreener

European mount. It should have been in the china cabinet

October 27, 2020, 06:22 PM

ZSMICHAEL

I am not surprised. I worked in Morgan County in the 1970s. Take Deliverance up ten notches. Was a sundowner town at that time. No running water in many of the homes. Poorer than poor. No meth back then. Some very rough characters. The jail had a nice stone arch inscribed with the words" It don't pay to do wrong. At times people just disappeared.

October 27, 2020, 08:07 PM

Tejas421

I was in Morgan County about three weeks ago and can testify that there is not much there except a lot of very tough territory. Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary is in Morgan County and is the place where James Earl Ray was incarcerated after he shot MLK. Ray and six others escaped over a wall using a homemade ladder made of pipe sections. As I recall, Ray never made it out of the brush and was recaptured 50 odd hours later. At one time Brushy Mountain operated its own coal mine using prison labor. Prisoners were tied to a post in the central courtyard and whipped if they didn’t make quota.

I understand that my grandfather, a judge in Galveston, had the top half of a human skull that he and his poker buddies used to hold the pot when they got together for a game.

October 28, 2020, 07:55 PM

senza nome

quote:
Human Skull Discovered Sitting on Fireplace Mantle for Over a Year and Sporting Sunglasses Positively Identified as Man Missing in Midsomer County, England.

October 28, 2020, 08:19 PM

AllenInAR

quote:
Originally posted by Tejas421:
I was in Morgan County about three weeks ago and can testify that there is not much there except a lot of very tough territory. Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary is in Morgan County and is the place where James Earl Ray was incarcerated after he shot MLK. Ray and six others escaped over a wall using a homemade ladder made of pipe sections. As I recall, Ray never made it out of the brush and was recaptured 50 odd hours later. At one time Brushy Mountain operated its own coal mine using prison labor. Prisoners were tied to a post in the central courtyard and whipped if they didn’t make quota.

Wait a minute....is this where they run that ultra-marathon, the Barkley??

October 29, 2020, 11:32 AM

Captain Morgan

This is why you cant find any bones from Bigfoot.

Years ago my mothers boyfriend was a mason that had found a skull while digging a footing. He kept it and never said a word to the authorities.
I wonder who it was that died. An Indian? Hoffa?

October 29, 2020, 01:32 PM

joel9507

quote:
retrieved the skull, sporting sunglasses, after getting a tip

That must have been a pretty interesting call:

<deputy picks up the phone> "Hello, Sheriff's Office" ....long silence.... "Say, What?"

October 29, 2020, 03:27 PM

Tejas421

quote:
Originally posted by AllenInWV:

Wait a minute....is this where they run that ultra-marathon, the Barkley??

You hit it! The Barkley was inspired by James Earl Ray's escape and is run in Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County. The Barkley has two courses, 60 miles and 100 miles. It has a little brother, The Barkley Fall Classic, which is only 50 kilometers. One of my running buddies, a beast of a woman who has finished several 100 milers ran the Fall Classic (50K) and said it nearly killed her. I can't imagine attempting the real thing.

October 29, 2020, 03:29 PM

Augen

Yep Florida has plenty areas for people to go missing permanently.

In SW Missouri, we had abandoned mine shafts and such that were filled with water. Deep places to hide things.

To have a skull on the mantle though - balsy. Stupid, but balsy.