The Thayers

[John M. Feeney]

Karin wrote: "... and the fact that after death body temperature drops apporximately one degree an hour"

Ah, you had brought up rigor mortis. I jumped out of my seat momentarily when I caught that second observation about body temperature. But then I realized it was possible, in mid- to late September, that the ambient temperature might already have been reached before the 40 hours passed.

Roseanne: Regarding the "inner city" analogy, the trick there is that the P.T.C. Trolley loop at 48th and Parkside was (and still is) pretty far off the beaten track, though not nearly as much so now as then. On the north side of Parkside av. is Fairmount Park, a vast, sprawling reserve of dedicated park land. (It's Philadelphia's version of "Central Park", more or less, though it's not at all central, but across the Schuylkill River some miles from the city center.)

On the south side around 48th was just the P.T.C. Loop complex and a few other buildings. Old topo maps show the PTC loop as a "railroad marshalling yard" of sorts, with an array of parallel tracks, forks, the round-about, and maintenance sheds. It's pretty open still on aerial photos -- maybe more so, since the tracks and complex themselves seem to be long gone.

The foreground to the car's location actually looks like a big clearing, with railroad tracks (with the car parked alongside) and a "terminal" behind it in the 1945 news photo -- taken too *far* back to even get a very good view of the car. (It's recognizable as a car, but that's about it.) So that particular vantage point would have made an ideal ball field, though workers Wharton and Petetti were likely on the other side of the tracks, around the P.T.C. buildings.

 

[Tracy Smith]

Returning to the point of it being odd that no one noticed a body in the car in all that length of time, I've found it amazing how oblivious people can be.

Case in point. When I was on the police force, one of the meter maids told me of an incident that had happened years before with another meter maid, long since retired. This meter maid had gone around the town square marking tires and later returning to give tickets to the cars still there with marked tires. One day she noticed a man sitting in his car with his arm propped against the window. She paid him no attention, as she thought he was merely waiting for someone inside the courthouse. It wasn't until the third day of patrol that she noticed that the car and the man hadn't changed position; that he was dead.

Now, I'm not sure if this story was told to me just to pull my leg, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true, as self-absorbed as most people are these days.

 

[Rosanne MacIntyre]

John F wrote-- On the south side around 48th was just the P.T.C. Loop complex and a few other buildings. Old topo maps show the PTC loop as a "railroad marshalling yard" of sorts, with an array of parallel tracks, forks, the round-about, and maintenance sheds. It's pretty open still on aerial photos -- maybe more so, since the tracks and complex themselves seem to be long gone.

Thanks for the explanation of the area surrounding
where his vehicle was found.

Just looking through MapQuest at Philadelphia today, this area is surrounded 4 blocks to the south and appx 1/2mi to the east by Penn Central RR Tracks. Are these one in the same as his fathers tracks for the Pennsylvania Railroad?

If so, I wonder if this area was not well known by him and a place he could have frequented for
various reasons.

Rosanne MacIntyre

 

[John M. Feeney]

Hi, Roseanne: I see the area you mean -- around the zoo and south along the river. The vestiges of the once mighty railroad litter that area, though much of it is now reverted land. (But a good bit is still in operation, too. I'm quite familiar with it from passing the area occasionally years back.) I'm not sure if the Penn Central and P.R.R. were related or not, though.

For best viewing, you may want to try the Microsoft Terraserver site:
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.asp

Strangely, if you do an advanced search (by address) for "Parkside av | Philadelphia | Pa" and select the 1984 topo for the second location match listed, you wind up positioned right over what was the PTC complex. (It looks vaguely like a Commodore's hat with tracks running out from it.)

If you're at all unfamiliar with topos, that 1984 one is a "revised" topo -- a modified reprinting of an older map. So, purple items are all additions since the original mapping, while apparent structures colored over with green indicate reversions of previous buildings, etc., to undeveloped land.

The P.T.C. ("Philadelphia Transit Company"?), of course, was a wholly separate entity from the P.R.R., but Jack and his family may well have had intimate familiarity with that too, since P.A.B. Widener (George Widener's father) was *the* Philadelphia streetcar magnate in 1912.

If you get a chance to view the topo and accompanying aerial photo, the newspaper photo definitely looks to have been taken from the south side of the tracks and complex, facing roughly north. (On the aerial photo, all that's still obvious is the "footprint" of the loop complex and tracks.)

Cheers,
John

 

[John M. Feeney]

Just a note of clarification regarding Phil Gowan's fine transcription of the Philadelphia Inquirer's (Saturday, Sept. 22, 1945) obituary for Jack Thayer, located here at ET.

I noticed, upon reviewing my own print-out recently, that the continuation page (at least) for the article prominently displays "Saturday Morning, Sept 23" at the top! That's wrong -- Saturday was really the *22nd*. But it's not a transcription error, it's the Inquirer's own goof.

Sorry for any misunderstandings there.

(I wonder what the readership thought of that: Just another SIC joke from the press??) ;^)

 

[Bob Cruise]

I hadn't paid strict attention to this thread until now.

Boy - does it smell.

In all the suicides I have ever heard about, I have yet to hear of one where a person slashes their own throat along with their wrists (accomplishing one after the other takes quite a bit of effort). My guess is that Thayer's throat was slashed BEFORE the wrists - and that the wrists were slashed to make foul play look more like a suicide.

I also have to wonder about Thayer's lifelong friend Former Lieutenant Governor John C. Bell. Bell seemed all-too-ready with a handy explanation: "He has been suffering from a nervous breakdown during the last two weeks, due, I believe, to worrying about the death of his son who was killed in service. A few days ago he seemed to develop amnesia."

Usually, those who offer a quick and reasonably sound theory usually know more than they are telling. Such explanations are meant to quell suspicion, and very often include details which seem to foreshadow the supposed cause of one's death. (How convenient - Mr. Thayer developed amnesia only a few days before his death...)

I also have to wonder about those giving corroborating evidence - like the secretary who was "the last" to see Mr. Thayer alive.

And one certainly cannot discount Michael Standart's comment about who inherited the Thayer fortune. Odd that the Bulletin made no mention of who survived Mr. Thayer. (Perhaps someone had influence with the local papers?)

Ah, rich people.

When questioning whether Thayer died a suicide or not, in light of the circumstances of his death, let's not forget that names like Leopold and Loeb and Klaus Von Bulow prove that even the rich are not incapable of murder/murder attempts.

As for the trail possibly going cold after so many years, that's never discouraged anyone from investigating Jack the Ripper.

I think it's high time someone investigate Thayer's death. If a wrong has been committed, it needs to be acknowledged.

 

[Adam McGuirk]

Jack the Ripper is different Bob. Everyone knows about Jack the Ripper. I think when all the public knows about something then someone will want to investigate it more. Know one really knows who Jack Thayer is. His death SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED but I don't really see it happening. When you have something as intruging as Jack the Ripper, people want to go investigate it. We don't know what happened there at all. In the investigations eyes Thayers case is closed, though I do want to see re investigated. But you just can't compare Jack the Ripper and Jack Thayer.
Adam

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I think the operative is that Jack Theyer's death should have been more closely investigated at the time. The problem is that 57 years ex post facto all the principles involved and any potential suspects have long since "gone to their reward" themselves.

This assumes...a dangerous passtime, I know...that Jack was in fact murdered. A stretch? Maybe. We'll never know, but as Bob noted, it sure does smell.

Cordially,
Michael H. Standart

 

[John M. Feeney]

Mike: Agreed. And Bob's reaction strongly resembles my own initial response. If anything, what I'm left with is the impression that the coroner's diagnosis was at best preliminary (and pretty surficial, really), yet accepted as final much too hastily. It might have been right, but it just seems massively under-investigated.

In the same attendant circumstances, but with no political clout involved, I imagine a formal investigation would have been ordered to resolve all doubt. Yet there's no suggestion of that at all. Again, even the one reporter on that watch story sounds incredibly sceptical in an otherwise fairly conservative newspaper!

I have entertained the same questions about the underlying possibilities of slashed wrists *and* throat that Bob has, envisioning perhaps "the perfect crime"? Part of my problem is something that Bob hit right on the head. There's *far* too much of former Lieutenant Governor Bell in all of this! Even the secretary's revelation about his last wherabouts really just comes from *him* in those news accounts. His intercession may have been benignly intended, but it sticks out like a sore thumb. (And the influence of a powerful political figure in 1945 could be substantial, either directly or through connections.)

Sadly, I don't think we'll ever know for sure. The evidence itself is long gone, so blood toxicology or other tests are likely out of the question. And Philadelphia seems fairly guarded about dissemination of coroner's reports. If a full autopsy was even done, a confidant -- formerly a Philly police officer -- advises me that the report is very likely either trashed or buried by now. (About five to seven years' retention is all he thought likely for the Medical Examiner's office.)

But "fishy" is definitely the appropriate smell.

Jack apparently left behind a widow (Lois), three daughters, and one surviving son. The Jack Thayer web site -- http://www.bytenet.net/thayer/ -- has further details on his lineage.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Thanks John. I bookmarked that site for further use. I noticed this little blurb in his ET bio that might explain things a bit;

"Jack Thayer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and went into banking; later he returned to the University as Financial Vice-President and Treasurer."

Seems to me, if somebody wanted to take him out, his associates, business partners, and likely a few customers would be the place to look. The old adage of "Follow the money" is one that investigators hold to for good reason. People like this inevitably make enemies and some play for keeps!

 

[Christophe Damore]

Hello All!

I have no clue whether this thread has died a quiet death (God...excuse me using that cliche on this particular thread) but I wanted to add a few thoughts to ponder and see if anyone out there feels the same way or has any additional information...

In regards to Bob Cruise's 7/16/02 post:

"In all the suicides I have ever heard about, I have yet to hear of one where a person slashes their own throat along with their wrists (accomplishing one after the other takes quite a bit of effort). My guess is that Thayer's throat was slashed BEFORE the wrists - and that the wrists were slashed to make foul play look more like a suicide."

Interesting theory, BUT here is something you should consider...slitting one's wrists is an extremely painful (And unless one does it correctly) an extremely slow way to die. My guess is that Jack Thayer initially slit his wrists, and after a while of waiting moved towards his throat to speed things along a bit (Believe it or not, this does happen more often than one would think and usually more with men than women). If he did indeed start by slitting his wrists, the slit to his throat probably wasn't quite deep, but enough to send him into shock and unconsciousness. Unless he had severed the tendons by the initial cuts, he would have had enough strength and motivation to go towards his throat. Incidentally, does anyone know if he was right or left handed?

If anyone could get ahold of his full autopsy report or point me in the direction to obtain one (I've never done anything like that before...I'm a bit unsure if it can even be done) the marks and deepness of the cuts would be the telltale signs. Usually anyone who slits his wrists will have one or two initial testing lines before the deep cut.

As to the question regarding "amnesia" a few days before his death...Disassociative fugue states/periods of amnesia, psychic numbing and depersonalization are all common features of PTSD (Refer to the DSM-IV-R) and believe me, will occur at the drop of hat and usually under periods of extreme duress.

I'm about 99% sure he did commit suicide due to PTSD after some type of extreme stressor, but I'd like to see a full autopsy report just to nail down that extra 1%.

-Chris-

 

[David F. Smith]

Hello All,

Having just stumbled across this thread, I just wanted to add that maybe we should forward this to the Philadelphia authorities as a possible "Cold Case" that may be worth looking into. With todays latest technology and investigation techniques image what could have been done? wouldn't it be something if some sharp detective today discovered that he was murdered and the story of depression was just a red herring!

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>what could have been done? wouldn't it be something if some sharp detective today discovered that he was murdered and the story of depression was just a red herring!<<

It might serve to clearify and revise the historical record to something that was more accurate, but that's about it. (And at that, only if Jack Theyer was in fact murdered.) After all these years, I think it's a safe bet that all possible witnesses, including our hypothetical murderer are pushing up tombstones by now.

 

[Jonathan Edward Thayer]

Does anyone have any knowledge of a Thayer family returning to England to live? It has long been a family story that we had ancestors on the Titanic and I'm currently trying to do a family tree but haven't got very far.

If anyone has any information regarding one of the Thayers returning to England it would be gratefully received.

 

[Jeff Evers]

Hello All,

I am not sure if this link was previously posted - forgive me if it was. The link is to the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania - where many of the Thayer's are buried. The website includes a picture of the plaque dedicated to John B. Thayer.

http://theredeemer.org/history.htm