Who knew that an innocent foliage shot could turn into a long read of a Marblehead murder mystery?
On Saturday, I was driving around Marblehead trying to capture images of foliage before 2 inches of rain fell and washed all the color away. I had started at Forest River park and then found myself at the light in front of Gatchell Park and figured I would turn into the lot to explore. I photographed one tree with tackle dummies underneath and then found this scene of a small baseball diamond backed by foliage under a perfect sky. I decided to include the sign behind home plate that reads Clem Rodgers Field and the scoreboard to the left.
Before sharing this image, I googled Clem Rodgers and found myself reading an article on Yankee Magazine of a murder mystery that took place in Marblehead in the 1950s with Inspector Clemmons Rodgers (later in the article called Clem Rodgers). The story was fascinating and I highly encourage you to read it. It begins:
From Yankee Magazine January 1978
Like the Old Harbor town itself, some of us in Marblehead, Massachusetts, have for twenty-eight years had a grisly horror on our hands. Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend in 1950, as a savage nor’easter battered the Massachusetts coast, spinster Beryl Atherton was strangled to death in her own kitchen, her throat then slashed open in the sign of the cross. From the first, police were without a trace of murderer or motive. I was a newcomer at the time — and among the earliest of suspects.
I remember this story well and if not mistaken it happened at my mother’s friend’s house on Sewall street I believe.
Remember it well.
I remember my mom telling my siblings and I this story as kids. My mom lived around the corner from her at the time, she was a school teacher if I recall.
Anyone who grew up in town will never forget the unsolved murder. So many stories.
I wasn’t born yet at time of her murder…but I have been fascinated with this case since I was a kid…my Mom told us kiddos about it in the 70’s….
My uncle remembers the story well as does my mother. Miss Atherton was her teacher. It was a traumatic thing at the time, however, and there were no forensic teams or detectives assigned to the case so unfortunately the mystery is unsolved.
I love that you are STILL discovering the multitude of nooks and crannies of delight in Marblehead. Sometime, go for a hike at the back of Gatchell’s pit (as we call it) where the entrance to the woods is, and hike up thru there over to Salem…that’s where we girl scouts used to have our camp and it was like another world in there.
I think she was a school teacher at Glover Clem Rodgers was one of the great who founded MHead Little League BC
That was definitely a strange article. People have asked me if I had written about the school teacher in my novella, When Two Women Die, but I hadn’t. My book is about the Martha Brailsford murder of 1991 and that of the Screeching Woman legend, the woman who was murdered by pirates in 1690. I am struck by the detail of the fur coat in the Atherton murder, which I didn’t know about. Criminals often think old people who live alone have money hidden away and are easy targets. That may have triggered him to follow her, and made him enraged when he found she had no money at all. But who knows. The criminal mind doesn’t really make sense. I agree with the comments of trying a DNA test if any evidence remains. People obviously still care. It’s such a sad story.
Read the full text and comments. This was ‘our’ time.
Everyone remember Clem Rogers & Beryl Atherton ?
My mom told me about the Atherton murder.
The colors are so beautiful
My father, GO BRAVES!!
Carl Rodgers
This is the first time I ever heard about this murder. I grew up not far from that house and walked by there all the time.
She was one of my teachers. I think I was in 3rd grade at Glover school in Clifton.
My mother had her ideas as to who committed the murder. I think many Headers did and still do…
I miss the old town! go home as often as possible…
Who? I’d love to hear some of the theories?
Richard Dedrick