The Corpse Under the Bed

 

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Located about thirty miles northwest of Pittsburgh, the borough of Freedom in Beaver County clings to the banks of the Ohio River. It is the home of the Conway Yard, which, in 1956, became the largest freight yard in the world-- a title it held until 1980. When the Pennsylvania Railroad decided to expand the Conway Yard in the early 1950s, it brought an influx of new residents, many of whom were temporary workers who rented apartments and rooms from boarding houses. Freedom's newfound prosperity was a boon for local landlords, but not every landlord made out so well.

Such was the case of 53-year-old Olive Mae Headland, whose strange death in the fall of 1956 has never been satisfactorily explained. That's because the lifeless body of Mrs. Headland was found, without a mark, in a rather strange place-- under the bed of one of her tenants.

On Tuesday, October 9, 1956, a man walked into the offices of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph. He asked for the "head reporter", claiming that he had an unbelievable story to tell. He was greeted with a small measure of skepticism, as there was no such thing as a head reporter in a major big city newspaper, and the visitor appeared slightly disheveled and not particularly well-educated. By all appearances, he was just one of an untold number of typical blue collar workers from the steel and railroading towns along the Ohio River-- a rough-looking fellow with an enormous scar across his right cheek, the sort of scar one might've earned as a souvenir of a knife fight or barroom brawl. He introduced himself as Paul Musloe, a 37-year-old truck driver from Freedom, and he insisted upon telling his story to somebody.

Musloe was directed to the office of city editor Byron Campbell.

"Boy, have I got a crazy story for your paper," he said. "But I'm gonna need a drink first." The editor didn't keep whiskey on the premises, so he promised to give Musloe two dollars to buy himself a drink after he finished telling his story. Musloe agreed.

"You see, it's like this, Mr. Campbell," he began. "I found my landlady dead under my bed. I knew she was dead because she was cold when I touched her hand. I got scared and ran." A serious expression crept upon the editor's face.

"Did you kill her?" he asked.

"No, I didn't. She's just dead."

Byron Campbell summoned of his reporters, Matty Rumin, who asked Musloe why he hadn't notified the police. Musloe said that he was afraid they would "work him over". He explained that he discovered the body of his landlady five days earlier, after he awakened in his bedroom at 11:00 a.m. and reached under his bed for a pair of shoes. Musloe told Rumin that he became scared and fled the scene in Mrs. Headland's car. When asked if he'd had any previous trouble with the law, Musloe admitted that he had once been arrested because of drunken brawling, and when he told the reporter that he couldn't remember what he had done with Mrs. Headland's automobile, Rumin picked up the telephone and called the Freedom Police Department. Suspecting that Paul Musloe may have either been delusional, or had committed a murder while under the influence of alcohol, the reporter pleaded with Chief of Police R.L. Edge to search his room.

When Chief Edge arrived at the home at 692 Third Avenue, he forced open the locked bedroom door and was confronted by the rank stench of decomposition. Paul Musloe hadn't been delusional or joking-- the body was under the bed, just as he had described. After confirming the woman's identity, Chief Edge notified the Pittsburgh homicide squad and Paul Musloe was taken into custody in the Sun-Telegraph press room. Captain Joseph Flynn questioned the truck driver, then turned him over to Beaver County authorities and held on an open charge pending the result of an autopsy.

The Coroner Stumped

The Beaver County coroner, Dr. Thomas L. Todd, examined the body of Olive Mae Headland but wasn't able to determine what had caused the 53-year-old woman's death. There were no bruises, scratches or marks on the body, which was fully clothed. As for how she had gotten under her tenant's bed, he didn't even want to venture a guess. Tissue samples were taken from the body, along with contents from the dead woman's stomach, and sent to the pathologist at the State Police laboratories in Harrisburg. While authorities awaited the test results, they pieced together all the facts they could find about Olive Mae Headland and Paul Musloe.

Mrs. Headland had been a widow for about two years; her husband had died on Christmas Day in 1954. Wilbur Headland, whom she had married in 1941, was her second husband, and she was Wilbur's second wife-- his first wife having passed away in 1937. Olive's first husband, Harper McGaffick, had filed for a divorce a few years earlier. It was also learned that Olive had been arrested several times while intoxicated. 

As for Paul Musloe, who had recently separated from his wife, he was one of three men who rented rooms from Mrs. Headland. Interestingly, he had quit his job as a truck driver the day before he found the landlady's body. According to Musloe, he was getting up to go to a job interview when he made the gruesome discovery. He claimed that he had driven Mrs. Headland's car to Pittsburgh and had parked it near the Farmer's Market on the North Side, but was then was unable to find it. He believed that it had been stolen.

Between the missing automobile, the location of the dead woman's body and Musloe's five-day silence, police weren't sure what to make of the bizarre situation. Did the recently unemployed trucker sell it in Pittsburgh for cash because he desperately needed the money? If so, this would establish a motive for murder-- but whether or not Olive had been murdered in the first place still remained a mystery.

Charged With Manslaughter

Upon relentless questioning, Paul Musloe admitted to investigators that he and Mrs. Headland had gotten into a heated argument after he told her that he was moving out of the house. Musloe claimed that Olive had shoved him, and that he shoved her back. She fell to the floor and died. Yet, he could not account for his landlady's death, and the autopsy failed to find any signs of violence.

Musloe, who was also known to be a heavy drinker, didn't recall much of anything. "She suffered an attack, like some sort of fit, during which she died," was all that he could remember about that fateful morning, though he said that he went on a five-day drinking spree after her death. He couldn't offer a good excuse as to why he had stolen the car, or why he decided to hide the body for several days before telling anyone about it. By the time the body was found, decomposition could've obliterated any tell-tale signs of murder.

District Attorney Richard P. Stewart, however, had a strong feeling that Musloe wasn't telling everything he knew about what had taken place inside the house on Third Avenue, or what had transpired during the five days after he claimed to have found the body. On Wednesday, October 10, he charged Paul Musloe with voluntary manslaughter. 

Meanwhile, as the body of Olive Mae Headland was quietly laid to rest at Oak Grove Cemetery in Freedom, authorities in Pittsburgh searched for the missing 1953 Ford Victoria which had belonged to Olive Mae Headland. They came up empty-handed.

 

Musloe Exonerated

On November 5, Paul Musloe had his preliminary hearing in Freedom before Magistrate Thomas W. Harrison. Appearing with Musloe was his defense attorney, Norman S. Faulk, who advised the defendant not to testify. One witness who did testify was Dr. A.W. Culley, who told the magistrate that while pathologists had been unable to determine the cause of Mrs. Headland's death, that didn't rule out the possibility of foul play. Nevertheless, the manslaughter charge was dismissed on the recommendation of District Attorney Stewart, who admitted there was not enough evidence to support charging Musloe for the death of his landlady. Musloe, however, remained held under bond in connection with the theft of Mrs. Headland's automobile.

It's been nearly seventy years since Paul Musloe told his strange story to the newspaper reporter from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, yet the death of Olive Mae Headland remains a mystery. Did she die from natural causes, or did five days of decomposition under Paul Musloe's bed destroy all evidence of foul play? If death had been the result of heart failure or a stroke, surely the autopsy would've discovered this fact. Yet, for whatever reason, Musloe fled from the scene in Mrs. Headland's car and was never able to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why he had stolen it, or whatever became of it. Perhaps he had simply panicked... or perhaps the car had to be disposed of, because it contained some vital clue pointing to murder.

 

One Possible Explanation

Without any evidence, it's unfair to accuse the out-of-work trucker of any crime, much less a crime as dastardly as murder. For all we know, Paul Musloe may have never so much as gotten a speeding ticket or a fine for jaywalking. However, looking at the proximity of the Headland home to the Ohio River in old aerial photographs, and comparing the lay of the land to how it appears today, one possible solution to the mystery does emerge. 

Location of the Headland home on Third Avenue

 

Today, the four-lane Ohio River Boulevard covers the spot where the house once stood. Yet, if you were to look at an old aerial photograph of the borough of Freedom, such as this 1961 photograph from the Pennsylvania Geological Survey, you'd see that 392 Third Avenue, situated at the corner of Third Avenue and Seventh Street, had a garage in the rear of the property. While pathologists were unable to find evidence of poison in the contents of the dead woman's stomach which had been sent to Pennsylvania for analysis, this doesn't rule out the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide, a colorless and odorless gas, remains virtually unoxidized following inhalation. Less that 0.1% of inhaled carbon monoxide is converted to carbon dioxide inside the body, but what about the remaining 99.9%? According a 2020 scientific paper from Japan on the topic of death by carbon monoxide poisoning, approximately 85% of the gas is eventually discharged from the body during the process of decomposition. The remainder is absorbed into organ tissues and the blood, and since carbon monoxide easily binds to the blood's hemoglobin, one tell-tale sign of carbon monoxide poisoning is a cherry-red coloration of the skin-- but there's a catch.

This coloration is only observed when concentrations of carboxyhemoglobin, or CO-Hb, exceed 30%. The CO-Hb levels are significantly higher in smokers poisoned by carbon monoxide as compared to non-smokers, whose CO-Hb concentration after carbon monoxide poisoning may be as low as 2%. In other words, if Olive Mae Headland had been a non-smoker, or even a light smoker, her skin may not have produced this tell-tale symptom at all. And, even if it did, wouldn't this red coloration be masked by five days of decomposition having produced its own discoloration?

Might this explain why Paul Musloe waited five days to report his landlady's death? Was this sufficient time for the carbon monoxide to dissipate? 

While there are other ways for a pathologist to detect carbon monoxide poisoning, such as necrosis and apoptosis in regions of the brain, these charges are usually observed only in cases of carbon monoxide poisoning that occur over a prolonged period. But what about using spectrophotometry to find evidence of elevated CO-Hb levels? While spectrophotometers have been around since the 1940s, the earliest applications of this technology in the field of forensics didn't occur until the mid 1950s, when the mysterious death of Mrs. Headland occurred. It's unclear if the Pennsylvania State Police even had access to this technology back in 1956. And even if they did, how reliable were the results? Other, more-reliable methods of detecting carbon monoxide in the body, such as barrier discharge ionization detectors, didn't come along until decades later.

Is Mrs. Headland's car at the bottom of the Ohio River?

 

Another interesting detail can be seen while looking over aerial photographs of the borough of Freedom. The location of the Headland home was just one block from Eighth Street, where an underpass beneath the Conway Yard railroad tracks takes you right to the edge of the Ohio River.

While there is no evidence to support this theory, it is completely possible that Olive Mae Headland was trapped inside her garage with the car running, just as it's possible that her 1952 Ford Victoria could've been converted into a highly-lethal "gas chamber" simply by running a hose from the exhaust through the window or, if the car had been a convertible, through a hole cut in the top. In either case, there would be evidence in the form of alterations to the car or fingerprints. And why stress over wiping away every print when one could easily just roll the car into the deep, wide Ohio River, knowing that your actions would be hidden by the world's largest freight yard?

Maybe, just maybe, the reason why Pittsburgh police couldn't locate the car was because Paul Musloe had never driven it there in the first place. The only thing detectives had to go on was the rambling stories told by an unreliable narrator with a mysterious scar across his cheek. Perhaps now, after sixty-eight years, it's time for authorities to dust off their files and take a long overdue second look at the mysterious death of Olive Mae Headland.

At any rate, the only person who knows what really happened on that morning in October of 1956 took his secrets to his grave. Musloe passed away in May of 1988, leaving nothing behind except for a brief newspaper death notice stating there would be no visitation at the funeral home, and that his burial would be a strictly private affair.

 

Sources:

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Oct. 10, 1956.
Greenville Record-Argus, Oct. 10, 1956.
Pittsburgh Press, Oct. 10, 1956.
Ellwood City Ledger, Oct. 11, 1956.
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Nov. 1956.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 3, 1988.