A man found dead in a church halfway across the country may have suddenly unlocked the key – quite literally – to one of America’s most famous unsolved crimes.
On Dec. 4, 1982, a parishioner at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise found a man collapsed under a pew. She had worked as a nurse, so she quickly recognized the man was either dying or already dead. A priest was summoned to give his last rites, and police came not long after. In the dead man’s pockets were a typed suicide note and $1,900. The note said the money was enough to cover his cremation and any additional funds should be donated to the church. It was signed Wm. L. Toomey.
No such man existed. His fingerprints came up empty for matches, and it seemed like his sandy-colored hair might have been a dye job to conceal his appearance. Even a feature on “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1990 did nothing to uncover the identity of the man dubbed the Unknown Wanderer. All that was known for sure was that he had used cyanide to kill himself…