A Severed Hand Found in Dog’s Mouth Stirs Mystery in Bellwood, Near Lowville, 1900

A short article about a mysterious severed hand in a dog’s mouth first appeared in the Watertown Daily Times’ May 17th edition. The Times printed another article in its June 2, 1900 edition, later reprinted in the Carthage Republican and the Journal & Republican, published in Lowville, on June 14th, 1900. Some brief information was published in a third article in the WDT on June 4th, noted at the end.

A Severed Hand: A Mystery at Bellwood (May 17, 1900, WDT)

Carthage, May 17 — A farmer named A. J. Twitchell, who lives at Gardners Corners, 12 miles above Copenhagen, came to this village yesterday afternoon with the strange story which should be investigated at once.

He says that while on his way to Carthage he stopped at the house of a farmer named Youngs, who lives at Bellwood. While talking together they observed a dog running about with a piece of raw meat which, from its peculiar shape, attracted their attention. 

Calling the dog for the purpose of examining the meat, they were horrified to find that it was a man’s hand, and had been apparently freshly cut off. It was the left hand and had been cut or chopped off at the wrist. It was above the ordinary size, showing that it must have belonged to a large man. 

The flesh on the back of the hand was unbroken, and that on the fingers was closely united to the finger nails, which were white and fresh. On the palm of the hand and inside of the fingers the flesh was torn and bruised, but that may have been caused by the dog’s teeth. 

There is much excitement over the matter, as there has been no accident reported from the vicinity of Bellwood, neither is any one missing. 

Bellwood is about 10 miles above Copenhagen and consists of a cheese factory, store and a few houses.  

Bellwood Farmers are Greatly Agitated (June 2, 1900, WDT)

They Found Traces of a Dissected Body in a Deep Marsh—Actions of a Medical Student.

The Carthage Republican has the following:

In trying to solve one mystery, the farmers of the rural hamlet of Bellwood, tens miles back among the Lewis County hills from Copenhagen, have succeeded in unearthing another yet more gruesome, and while before they had merely a severed human hand as a clue to some hidden horror, they now have what they believe to be portions of the dissected remains of the body to which the hand belonged, and are yet as much in the dark regarding the identity of the victim of the evident mutilation as before.

On May 16th last a farmer named Herman Youngs, who lives a short distance from Bellwood, and A. J. Twitchell, who lives two miles south of Gardner’s Corners, made a startling discovery. Twitchell, who was driving to Carthage with a load of potatoes for Dealing Brothers, had pulled up his team in front of Youngs’ house and was talking to the owner of the place, when their attention was attracted by Youngs’ dog coming up the same and carrying in its mouth what they at first took to be a strangely shaped piece of meat. Investigation showed that it was a human hand, somewhat decomposed, which had apparently been cut or chopped off at the wrist.

It was the left hand of a man of a large and bony frame, being above the ordinary size. The finger nails were white and fresh, seeming to indicate that the hand had not been that of a toiler. On the palm and inside of the fingers the flesh was torn and bruised, apparently by the dog’s teeth. The two men secured the hand from the dog, and after talking the matter over determined to keep their own counsel regarding the affair until Twitchell could report it to the authorities at Carthage.

Youngs felt such a horror at having the object around his place that he left the hand in the barn in an empty nail keg, Twitchell refusing to bring it with him to Carthage to turn over to the officers, as Youngs advised, for a like reason. Twitchell reported the matter on his arrival at Carthage that night, and returned home the next day to find that the hand had disappeared under the following circumstances. 

Strange Medical Student

On the Butternut Ridge Road, about four miles east of Bellwood, lives a Canadian French farmer, named Lois Yell, and during the past winter a young man whose voluminous mail came to the little Bellwood post office address to J. H. Garlock, has been an inmate of the Yell family. It was said that he was a medical student of McGill College, Montreal, who had been obliged to give up his studies owning to failing health, and that he was spending a few months with his kinsmen for rest and recreation. He spent most of his time hunting and wandering among the fields and woods and seemed to shun the society of the people in the neighborhood. 

On the evening of May 16th, the day that the discovery above described was made by Twitchell and Youngs, Garlock came to Youngs’ home and asked to see the severed hand, for the story of the ghastly find had leaked out, and already half the inhabitants of the hamlet, which consists of a country store, a cheese factory, blacksmith shop and a half dozen houses, had been up to the Youngs farm on a similar errand, but had all been resolutely refused a glimpse of the relic until it was turned over to the officers of the law.

As Garlock was a medical man, however, Youngs took him to the barn and by lantern light exhibited to him the rapidly decomposing human member. 

Garlock insisted on taking the object to the village with him, but to this proposition Youngs would not listen and he departed without the hand, which was left in the nail keg, the barn being securely locked. Next morning the nail keg was empty and the hand was seen no more, and a day or two later it was learned that Yell had driven Garlock to Castorland on the evening of the day following his visit to the Youngs place, and that he was reported to have returned to his home in Canada. 

Finding Traces of the Body 

A ghastly discovery, which would have been a nine days’ wonder in a much larger place, was the sole topic of conversation for days afterward in the backwoods hamlet, and every youth in the surrounding country as well as many of their elders, became amateur detectives and searched through the the tangled swamps and rocky ledges for the body to which the hand had belonged. Last Sunday, two country boys, Ira Plummadore and Henry Burks, who were still keeping up the search at unoccupied hours, made a discovery which is believed at Bellwood to solve the mystery of the severed hand. 

In the bed of a little creek, flowing through “The Gulf,” as a deep swamp about half a mile back of the Yell farm is known, they found a long coffin-shaped box, perforated with auger holes at either end so that the ice cold water of the rill flowed through it, while at various points in the channel of the stream were strips and fragments of decomposed flesh, which from the cuticle still adhering they believed to have been the tissues and integument of a human body.

These portions of supposed human anatomy seemed to have floated down the current of the stream to the points where found, having evidently been thrown into the water as dissected away, to settle to the bottom of the channel as they floated down stream. The little opening on the bank of the rill, where the box was found, was surrounded by a tangle of evergreen bushes, and there was a little path leading to the corpse from the direction of the Yell farmhouse, which had evidently been much traveled. 

On the bank of the stream, alongside the box, and elevated upon large rocks to form a sort of table, was a plank about six feet long. The ground at either side of this table was trodden as hard as a floor, while marks in the mud of the bank showed where the box had been raised, apparently one end at a time, from the bed of the stream to the shore alongside the table.

Not a piece of flesh was found large enough to be identified as having formed any particular part of a human body, while the state of decomposition made any very close investigation by the residents of the settlement impossible. Many shreds of flesh, to which the cuticle is still adhering, are still retained and reserved in spirits, however, by the finders, and a microscopic examination will be hand to determine whether they formed a part of a human body or were, as some suspect, pieces of the anatomy of some animal placed in the creek by some practical joker to mystify the good people of the settlement. 

Garlock Visited the Swamp

Louis Yell, the farmer at whose house young Garlock lived, is said to deny that the young man was in any way related to him. He has admitted, it is said, that Garlock went nearly every day, sometimes twice in one day, since spring opened, to the big swamp, claiming that he was perfecting himself in the study of botany of various medical roots and herbs, of which he collected many specimens.

He was, Garlock is said to have admitted, “a regular nighthawk,” who wandered around at all hours of night and slept until nearly noon. He often drove Yell’s farm team to Castorland of a Saturday evening, and more than once, the farmer says, he suspected from the jaded and muddy appearance of the nags that they had been taken from the stable while their master slept and subjected to hard driving. 

Yell finally admitted, it is said, that he knew that his boarder had been “doing a little dissecting” back in the woods, but claimed that he had operated on the bodies of calves.

The farmers of Bellwood, however, accept no such explanation of the matter, but believe the body to which the severed hand belonged was “snatched” from some country grave in that vicinity by the medical student from McGill during his nocturnal expeditions, and that the skeleton was divested of its covering of flesh by the dissecting knife and carried away to aid the cause of medical science, pointing to the fact that no bones, either animal or human, were found in the ghoulish thicket in the swamp, as proof of the correctness of their conjectures.  

On June 4, The Watertown Daily Times followed up, stating that several newspapers claimed the story was fake because the hand was allegedly stolen the night it was found. After The Times published the initial story, the student disappeared, leaving people to wonder if it was murder or body snatching. The Times noted, “Since the finding of the hand, another hand was found in the streets of Utica.”