Early on the morning of May 6, 1878, Benjamin Aiken, a hired hand from Point Pleasant in New Madrid County, was shooting waterfowl along the banks of the Mississippi River when a skiff with the remains of a Jefferson County mystery drifted down the river toward him.
“His curiosity was aroused and procuring a long pole he waited for the object’s approach … When the skiff was directly opposite him, Aiken caught it by means of the pole and drew it to shore. Lying in the bottom of the boat was a horrible, ghastly, grinning skeleton,” according to the St. Louis Evening Post in a May 11, 1878, article titled “Murder Will Out.”
The bones were bleached “snowy” white, and on the bony wrists were gold bracelets dangling with animal figures. Lying next to the skeleton was a breast pin well worn by sun and rain. In the boat were parts of a tarp which had decayed from exposure to the weather that once covered the body.
Aiken moored the boat as securely as he could, using a pole because the ropes tied to the skiff were rotten. He took the jewelry and placed it in his pocket and quickly traveled to the home of his employer, Ferdinand Maher, according to the article.
“He (Aiken) was perspiring from every pore and almost breathless, but he finally succeeded in imparting the facts to Mr. Maher, who immediately sent a servant for the County Coroner, Isaac Tebbets,” the reporter wrote.
After examining the remains, the coroner felt that there was no purpose in having an inquest for a person who had obviously been dead for several years. Aiken gave him the jewelry, and the bones were buried on the river bank, according to the article.
Later in the week, however, the possible identity of the woman came to light, for almost six years earlier near what was to be Crystal City, a young woman had disappeared from her parent’s home near Plattin Creek.
Julie Le Blanc, the daughter of Francois le Blanc, a farmer and the descendent of a noble family of France, disappeared early in July of 1872. She was 18 and intending to go to a neighborhood party that evening. She was last seen in her parent’s garden picking flowers for a bouquet, according to the article.
The family did not know she was missing because they believed she had met her date, James Leonard, and gone with him to the party, but when she could not be found in the morning, they started making inquiries.
Those who hosted the party said she never arrived and her date had arrived with his sister. No one had seen Julie Le Blanc.
“Companies of men searched the woods, and there they found traces of the footsteps of a man and a woman. The latter were the imprint made by shoes of the same size as those worn by the missing girl, as was found by comparing the tracks with one of her shoes. These tracks led to a creek where a boat, the property of Mr. Le Blanc, had been moored. This boat was missing,” according to the article.
The search continued along Plattin Creek and the Mississippi River to no avail.
At the time, her father suspected that one of her boyfriends might have had something to do with her disappearance. He suspected Philip Kenealy, “an ardent admirer of Julie’s ever since her childhood,” who was rejected in favor of Leonard. Julie’s mother thought the idea was “preposterous,” however.
Kenealy visited the girl’s parents after her disappearance. He told them he loved her and he could not stay in the community, since she was gone. He said had a new position in New Orleans at a wholesale store and left that evening.
When Julie’s father finally resolved to have him arrested, he could not be found, although “two good detectives” were put on the job, according to the article.
Six years later, Francois Le Blanc was on Iron Mountain Railroad traveling to New Madrid County to examine the jewelry found among the remains in the boat. Once he did, there was no doubt. The figures on the bracelets were lions and part of the heraldic crest of the Le Blanc family. The remains in the boat were his daughter Julie Le Blanc.
Her father then purchased a coffin in which to lay his daughter’s bones, but although the river bank where the bones were buried was thoroughly searched, the grave could not be found, and it was determined the grave was so close to the river that it could have caved into the river and the Mississippi carried them away, according to the Post.
And so, Francois Le Blanc went home without his daughter. According to the article, he believed she was abducted by Kenealy, strangled and hidden in the boat under a tarp where time and weather rotted the ropes that secured it and the girl in her floating casket drifted down the river.
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