On March 20, 1980, Thomas Newman and Stanley O'Dell, maintenance workers found a steamer trunk behind a dumpster at the Hudson View Apartments. Naturally they assumed someone wanted it to go out with the trash. Then they noticed blood on the outside.
The trunk was old, green and beat up with black trim and brass fittings. There were stickers on the outside for the French ocean liner Flandre and others from the Cunard Lines. It appeared the trunk had been tampered with because there was tape around the seams, and some of it had been pulled off. The men tried to lift it, but found it was too heavy. So they opened it, and inside was the nude body of a white, young woman with her head and hands missing.
