March 16, 1946, the Mountain Brow

They thought it was a pig at first, a farmer’s spoiled stock. At the top of the escarpment, two of the five kids had broken off from the group while arguing over a telescope, straying down the steep wooded slope. Bobby Weaver spotted it first.

“I’ve found something!” he yelled. The Reed and Weaver kids would find swine carcasses up along the brow every year and figured they’d fallen down the drop. The kids grouped together to see what the fuss was about. They poked it with sticks. It was human. Headless and limbless wearing blood-soaked underwear.

The kids scrambled for adult help – shaking off the fear the killer might be nearby. A couple of drivers thought it was a hoax and drove through them, sending the kids scattering.

The police arrived. An officer loaned Faith, the only girl in the group, his gloves and hat to ward off the cold creeping in now that they weren’t moving. Despite what they’d seen, they were still hungry. They had brought a hotdog picnic for their day trip and had planned on roasting them up near the falls. They refused a ride home till they’d ‘roasted their weenies’.

“We said no because we hadn’t had our hot dogs yet. I mean, we had carted these hot dogs and we worked…delivering papers to get our money to buy all this stuff. So after the hearse and everybody left, we went over to the field and roasted our weenies,” Faith Reed explained in a 2001 interview with Anne Pick, Reel to Real Productions.

Jimmy Weaver was the only one that testified because he was the oldest.

David Reed, interview with Anne Pick, Reel to Real Productions.

The officer found it hard to fathom the strength of their stomachs. But this was Steeltown after all, a city not shy of a body revealing itself on this stretch of rock. A decapitated body was found in 1924 by a group of boy scouts close to the same area. Shortly after, a second body was found further along the mountain brow. The city had developed a reputation.

“Hamilton Mountain has become a place of skulls, a mountain of human sacrifice.”

Toronto Daily Star

Yet to be found, a bloodied shirt picked off the road by city workers who moved it to a ditch because of its ghastly appearance, and a fedora hat left on a desk of the Hamilton Street Railway by a man who failed to show up for work.

Ultimately, the body would be identified by a birthmark and a testicular abnormality, an uncanny end to an already cruel demise. Who could have orchestrated such a crime?