Like all hospital Athens didn’t have the funds, the staff or the knowledge to take care of anyone they took in through their doors. They took anyone from TB victims, Civil War Veterans, mothers suffering from postpartum depression to convicts from the local jails when they were overcrowded. The nurses took their job very seriously and for a hospital filled with over 1200 people at one point and only 24 nurses and 4 doctors they had to come up with ways to restrain and deal with the patients. They had more than their fair share of things to deal with on a daily basis. From suicidal and homicidal patients to the plain old patients who just wanted some attention. 

Athens was built in 1878 and opened its doors less than a year after construction had started. The first set of staff were trained at smaller hospitals and not used to taking care of inmates or war veterans. They were only used to dealing with minor mental illnesses. The head nurse was a very stern and hard featured and had a hard personality to match them. She did not play around and took her job and the care of the Asylum very seriously. She chastised nurses and patients alike she did not discriminate when it came to dishing out punishment. Her punishment style was vicious if you ask the younger nurses and some of the patients, but some of the harsher patients and older nurses (who had not felt the wrath of her punishment style), it was not that bad. 

The main building housed the intake offices and the doctors offices and the main hall where patients assembled for their activities and it also housed in the basement the morgue, with a tunnel to the crematorium in a smaller building off of the main building. There was a dining hall and the kitchen and the surgery. Also in the basement was the rooms where Dr. Freeman was experimenting with lobotomies on some of the harder to deal with patients, but this wouldn't come for a few years yet. The early years was more of a reformatory for lower level inmates and TB victims and a recovery hospital for civil war veterans and also mothers with post par-tum depression.

One of the side buildings was a laundry, and one was a dairy and there was a butcher and bakery all these things were designed to keep the patients of Athens working and keep their minds busy and their hands busy and ear n their keep and make Athens self sustaining. They kept all manor of animals and crops at first. This worked out well because it kept costs down. 

Marybeth was the head nurse from the beginning for the first 10 years and like I said she was a formidable woman. She was a spinster who had no time for troublemakers, whiners, lazy people or hypochondriacs. She detested drug addicts and the slovenly. She felt all should pull their weight in life. Inmates were her least favorite to deal with because they she felt were parasites on humanity and the community. She was a woman of slight build, she was shorter than most of the nurses at just five feet two inches tall and she was a little over weight at 200lbs. She had salt and pepper hair that she kept pulled up in a severe bun on top of the back of her head and never let a hair out of place. She kept her uniform crisp and clean. She wore the white shirt and skirt and with high neck and long sleeves and she never showed her ankles, she always had her black boots on. She had her watch pinned to her apron which was navy blue and crisp too and never wrinkled. She expected this of all her nurses and staff also. 

The inmates wore black striped tops and black pants while all the other patients wore white shirt and pants, the women wore white shirts and blue skirts and every one when inside the building wore white socks the floors were always highly cleaned and shined. When outside the inmates and patients had work shoes for women and boots for men. She did an inspection of the morning staff before they could start and then an inspection of the night staff before they could start. She ran a tight ship. The doctors she tried to make adhere to a uniform and to dress the part but some just felt they did not have to do so and that she should mind her business and worry about the staff and patients like a good head nurse and running the hospital and leave them alone. 

The grounds keepers were all the inmates and the patients were the cooks, bakery and laundry staff. There were some patients who liked their jobs and the freedoms it gave them, but others felt like they were just being used for slave labor. There were a couple grounds keepers who did not take kindly to being made to earn their keep by keeping the grounds in order to have somewhere to sleep and eat. 

Athens was a first of its kind in the mid-west as far as mental health hospitals, it was self-sufficient and everyone earned their keep one way or another. The hospital barely used any state or county money to run. It was a new frontier for mental health and how hospitals and hospices worked in this part of the world. Most of Victorian England Asylums used state and federal money to run and were given food and and clothing from the government. Athens wanted to break new ground and not be like this and so was doing things a different way. The only money that was paid to the Asylum from the State or Government was to the staff, Nurses, Doctors, Surgeons and Morgue technicians. Everyone else worked for their keep. The orderlies weren't hired until in the 1900's so it was all up to the nurses to do in the beginning. 

The first four Doctors were not versed so much in Mental health as they were in regular health and primary care. One or two knew a little bit about the diseases of the mind but not much. They claimed all could be fixed with good old fashioned hard work. As with many ideas of keeping people from harming themselves restraints were used and the use of electricity and water treatments,

Most treatments by today's standards are barbaric. The use of submerging bound patients in icy water for hours and sometimes days on end to calm them or treat their mental deficiencies. There was later introduced the treatment of electroshock therapy and lobotomy. Most early therapies included binding and isolation and water and freezing treatment and high doses of medications like morphine and opium. Many Doctors did not know what to do with women who were depressed or had post par-tum.

During construction of the building, there had been a couple of accidents with the builders, one had fallen off of the scaffolding and broken his neck upon landing and had died on impact. Another had fallen from the top landing of stairs in the main building and had landed on a spike that had been sticking up that had been for the stairway banisters, but before he had fallen there had been no spikes sticking it out. It seemed like the construction although fast and pretty smooth had been fraught with one fatality after another, if not fatality it had been an accident where the person no longer could work or earn anything. It seemed like a doomed project. 

The man behind the initial project and funding of Athens had died of a premature heart attack when the papers had been signed just weeks later. Then his son had been killed in a horse riding accident a month later. His partner had been left with all the responsibilities of arranging the work and hiring the staff and making sure all permits were correct and within specs. His partner had, had to work man a late night and long weekend and his young wife who was 15 years his junior had gotten lonely and had started to have an affair with the junior partner in his law firm that he was partner in. This had left him devastated and he had ended up drinking himself into a stupor and then eating a bullet late at night in his office.

The land that Athens had been built on was equally as cursed said the locals. It was part of the sacred burial grounds of the local Native Americans. It was a sacred and some of the workers who said they worked late at night said they heard howls and screams and saw images of Indians in the shadows and in the trees watching them. Some were so scared by what they saw that they didn't ever return after finishing their shift. One such man was the night foreman John O'Shea he was alone walking the scaffold doing some last minute checks before coming down one night and going home when he looked down and said he saw an Indian in all his ceremonial dress waving an ax at him in a threatening way as if to tell him this was his land and he was disturbing it and to not return. He said it scared him so much he almost fell off the scaffolding. The next morning he told the day shift foreman he wasn't coming back and that nothing good would ever come from this building.

Most of the locals just chocked it up to superstition and old folk tales and silly old men and women telling tales to stop the building of Athens. The younger people were happy for the building it meant jobs and it also meant the over crowded jails wouldn't be a problem anymore and the crazies would be taken off the streets and taken care of. The older generation they said were too superstitious and needed to see Athens for the blessing that it was. But if you took into account all the misfortunes and accidents and deaths during the building of Athens it was not such a blessing. 

Most of the grounds that were left as forest and trees had wildlife still in them after Athens was built, but for the few who had noticed, the grounds of Athens now had very few if any living things. Birds didn't fly there or sing, animals didn't walk through the grounds, it was as if they walked around and purposely avoided getting too close. It was quiet all the time, except for the sound of the workers and vehicles bringing the construction materials. Some would say this was a bad omen. others just said it was because the site was so full of activity that they were scared to come around. But even at night no animals came near the newly built Athens. 

When the inspectors came to do a final walk through and make sure the building was able to open and the first patients and inhabitants were able to move in, they were met with an eerie and unsettling silence in the buildings and on the grounds. They walked the floors and halls and outer buildings and the gravel driveways and the basements and the crematorium and signed off on their papers and yet the new partner who had taken on the project after his partner had eaten the bullet noticed the inspectors kept looking around and behind them as if they felt followed. One even asked if he could get some fresh air while in the basement, because he felt trapped as he put it. Which sounded like an odd thing to say. 

After the inspectors left, the delivery trucks came and delivered the beds, medical supplies and all the necessary medications and food supplies. Then the clothing supplies were delivered. After a week the staff arrived and started getting Athens ready for the first 400 patients. The next Monday they would be arriving from all around the State of Ohio. They would be lesser inmates. Inmates who were petty criminals, or had very little time to do but were taking up too much space in the county or city jail. The head nurse hired in her 24 nurses. there would be 12 day shift and 12 night shift nurses and a head nurse and an assistant head nurse. The nurses would be sleeping in a dormitory and the head nurse would be in her own quarters. These were off of the main building. The 4 Doctors would be able to either live in the doctors quarters or at home with their families if they were married. There was a head nurse office, a nurse station on every floor, a doctors office on every floor and 6 exam rooms on every floor. The patients slept in long dormitories of 10 beds on each wall either side of the room. 

In the basement there were 3 surgeries and a morgue and a tunnel going to the crematorium building. when the crematorium was running then the tunnel door was closed to stop fumes and smoke if any come into the basement, ventilation was not that great in the basement. There was later added an electroshock therapy room and a lobotomy room. 

Different therapies would be used over the years at Athens as the mental health medicine and therapies got better. But Athens stayed pretty much the same, inside and out. Old and ancient and decrepit. Many patients got better and many did not and some left and some did not. Some of those who did not leave did not leave in every way. Athens became known as being haunted from early on. Maybe due to the fact that it was built on ancient and sacred burial grounds or from all the tragedy surrounding the building of it, but tragedy and death was a common experience at Athens and haunting's were a common occurrence.

The first instance of a haunting occurred when the night shift nurse who was on her first shift ever at Athens, was sitting in the main hall front reception desk, when she heard a scream and a thud like someone falling from high and then landing on something. She glanced over to the stairwell where the scream and noise had come from and thought she had seen a man lying on his back all twisted and mangled like he had fallen from high up. She looked away to get up and get the first aid kit and when she looked back there was no one there and all was silent on the floor again. When she went over to where she thought she had seen the man lying she thought she could see the faint outline of a blood stain disappearing into the marble flooring.

She was more than a little unnerved so she went up to the second floor to tell the nurse on the second floor what she had heard and seen when the other nurse just looked at her like she had lost her mind she just went back downstairs and sat back down and opened up her book again. About an hour later she had a round of the floor to do, so she started walking and while walking she felt like she was being followed. She turned and nothing was there. At the end of the main hallway she looked out the big front doors at the main drive and thought she saw four men carrying a man on a stretcher towards the front door. So she pulled the bell pull to alert another nurse to come help her, when the nurse got there, she looked out the door and asked why she had pulled the bell pull. When the nurse looked again there was no one there.

The next morning the head nurse was not amused at the reports she was reading and receiving, so she decided to put this nurse on top floor duty the next night and she would pull the main floor duty to see if there was any merit to the things she had reported. 

Now the head nurse was not very liked at all, not by patients or staff. The first 400 patients really weren't patients at all they were more like inmate over flow from the local county and city jails. Marybeth felt it her responsibility to keep these people more in line than any others and also to find ways of punishing them, because she felt that sitting getting a free ride in her hospital was too good for them. Alot of the time in the beginning because Athens hadn't figured out how to be self-sustainable in the beginning, the inmates were kept locked in the wards or the main hall all day. This all changed when one of the new partners took over and decided that with all the land and empty buildings that Athens had it could be self-sustaining. So, they bought some seed and farm equipment and some animals and began the process of becoming self-sustainable.

After 5 years and more and more inmates arrived the number of inmates reached 1000, and Athens put a cap on this so no more could be taken in until some were released so they would have room for actual patients after all, it was a hospital for the mentally ill not for the inmate population. The first 100 patients that were actual patients for mental illnesses were Civil War deserters and Veterans and women who were abused and dealing with post par-tum depression and some of the more difficult patients were dealing with schizophrenia and disillusion. The schizophrenic patients because they had a tendency to urt themselves and others were kept either in straight jackets all day or tied to beds or strapped to chairs. Some patients would sit in corners murmuring to themselves. 

There were children admitted to the hospital too and put on two different wards, there was the ward for mildly disturbed children and then there was the ward for the children that needed to be restrained and were majorly disturbed. One of these children was Molly, she was 12 years old, but she acted like she was 4 or 5, she would chew her fingers until they bled, and she would urinate on herself and in her bed, she would sit and rock all day murmuring to herself. She had a favorite doll that she came in to the hospital with, and if this doll went missing or someone tried to take it from her then she would go berserk and she then had the strength of ten men and she would scratch and bite and scream. Molly didn't talk, it was like she had never been taught. She pointed at what she wanted and grunted and. She was a pretty little thing and was always happy when she was left alone to sit and look out the window and talk to her doll in her own language. Molly's parents had dropped her off on the steps of Athen's a few weeks after it had been opened. No one knew who her parents were or where she had come from. 

Molly liked to follow Marybeth around the ward when she came up there to check things out and see how things were going. This was the only time some of the nurses saw the softer side of Marybeth, was when Molly was around. Marybeth had very little time for children or anyone really but when it came to Molly for some reason she had plenty of time and she spent time with her and allowed her to follow her around. Molly went with Marybeth on her rounds if she was good, that was her treat from Marybeth if she didn't wet the bed or have an outburst. Molly seemed to have an understanding with Marybeth, that none of the other nurses could understand because Marybeth did not have this patience and understanding with any of the other patients or children or staff.

Henry was one of the first Civil War Veterans to have been taken in, he had a serious case of gout in his left leg from a bullet wound and he had a bad case of alcoholism, but he could tell a good tale. He was always spinning tales for the younger children to keep them quiet or out of the nurses way. Henry and Molly were kindred spirits, they were two peas in a pod most of the time, when Molly wasn't following Marybeth she was sitting on Henry's lap listening to the many tales of Henry's childhood or the war. Henry kept the war stories as clean and bloodless as possible so as to not give Molly nightmares. 

Another Civil War Veteran was Bobby, he was a deserter from the Confederate side and had been shot while deserting and he was dealing with a case of black lung that he got while working in the coal mines of West Virginia when he was younger before the war. He coughed and heaved and spit up blood some times, but he always had a smile on his face. He always had some sort of magic trick for the small children and stories like Henry, although Henry and him were from opposite sides, they got along and talked for many hours some times and discussed how the war had gone and should have gone. They talked politics and news and they talked about a good many things. Except they never talked about the illnesses. Sometimes they would help chastise the children for being naughty for the nurses. 

Big John was a large black man that worked the land and was a helper in general around the hospital. He helped if an inmate got out of hand, or a nurse needed help to subdue a patient or just work around the hospital in general. He was friendly and some of the nurses and older patients helped him to read and write and he helped them with their muscles if they were feeling weak he would carry them. He was liked by all the staff and most of the children and patients. Some didnt like him because of his color, but that was because of the era it was. But he didn't make and didn't have any enemies. 

Lila was the head cook, she had enemies all over the kitchen and the hospital grounds, because she was mean and she had a temper and she would spit in the food when she didn't think the staff were looking. She especially did that to the servant boys and girls and Big Johns food. She didn't like that they had so much freedom around the hospital. She would say it wasn't right. She didn't like Henry or Bobby, because she said they fought for the wrong side and they were traitors and they deserved to die and not be taken care of. Marybeth did not like to hear such talk especially not on her shift. Lila had many enemies and many a patient and servant boy had threatened to slit her throat while she slept.

Aida was the head laundry maid, she was always happy and she never disliked anyone. She always found the silver lining in every situation. She had a few inmates that worked for her she would have rather did not, and she had a couple patients that she would have rather stayed in bed every morning than came to work, but she never let on and she never treated them badly, unless they treated her badly. She always brought home made cookies and baked goods from home for her laundry workers for when they had lunch break because she knew how mean Lila was. A lot of the white workers in the laundry said they were surprised that a colored woman could be so nice to them, after all that they had been through. Aida had no children of her own, well not living anymore, she had been raised on a plantation in South Carolina with her parents and sold when she was 8 years old and ended up in Georgia. She had learned how to be a laundry maid in Georgia and when she was 16 she had ran away after being brutally raped by the master of the house and his sons and she had given birth to a still born child. When she reached Ohio she had stopped running and had settled. She had met a man and they had tried for years to have children, but it was never meant to be, so she took this job so she could be a “mother” to the children here at Athens.

Everyone who worked at Athens had a story and a reason why they had ended up here, some sad and some happy. Some patients stories were happy and some were sad. But every one had a story. Just like the walls had something to tell, so did everyone in here. If you listened closely enough you could hear the stories being told. Marybeth had come to Athens as the head nurse from a hospital in Cleveland, Oh. She had left there after the death of her husband to TB, he had been a prominent doctor in the Cleveland area and because of his diligence to his patients he had caught TB and had died in her arms from it. This had affected her greatly. She had sworn she would never love or get close to another person again after his death. He had been her soulmate, she had loved him from the time they had met when they were 16 years old. She had been head nurse in several hospitals over the years and yet had never felt like she belonged in any of them. 

Elizbeth the assistant head nurse who worked mainly nights at Athens, she was a widow at young age, she was only 25 years old and was a widow, her husband had died in a train accident only months before she had taken the job here at Athens. Was this a coincidence? Seems like another one of those accidents happening before due to someone getting or taking a job at Athens. She had been a night shift nurse since she was 18 and she had excelled in all areas and that was why Marybeth had chosen her for the job. Marybeth had chosen all her nurses because they were the best at what they do and could keep their head under pressure and working in this type of hospital they were going to need that.

The doctors had been hired by the partners who had arranged the building and funding of the hospital. Marybeth had no choice over them. She just hoped they would be as good as her nurses at what they do. One doctor she had heard of before and she knew he would be trouble because he liked to walk his own path and do things his own way whether it hurt patients or not. His name was Dr. Young. He had written some papers on the proper treatment of alcoholism and the disillusionment of the mind and the proper treatment of these disorders. Marybeth did not see how submerging a bound patient in freezing water for hours would do any more than give them pneumonia. But she was not a doctor and she had been warned by the partners not to interfere with the doctors methods or work. Another Dr. she did not like was Dr. Smythe, she did not like him because she did not see him as being clean and sterile in a hospital situation. She had heard from a couple of nurses that had worked with him before that he would regularly show up in a dirty lab coat and wear that same coat while seeing multiple patients and not clean his tools or hands in between. This must be changed. 

Marybeth was in charge of keeping patients alive and well she couldn't have a doctor jeopardizing that and she also couldn't have him showing up to work dirty that just wouldn't do.

 Dr. Smythe was one the first doctor to deal with the TB patients in their ward, which was on the 5th floor of the building in the back and blocked off from the rest of the floors and wards to stop the spread. Marybeth tried to keep Dr. Smythe from using the main stairs after visiting the patients without changing his doctor coat and shoes and scrubbing up and just use the back stairs, but he felt he did not have to do this. He said it could not be spread by touching only by air. Marybeth did not care about this she was just trying to keep the spread to a minimum and to keep the germs to a minimum. 

One evening Marybeth saw Dr. Smythe coming down the main stairs in a doctor coat that had fresh blood spray on it like someone from the TB ward had coughed up blood on him. She approached him, but he waved her aside and tried to barge past her in a hurry to his office. He was sweating profusely and looked like he had seen a ghost or something worse. She had seen this look before, this was the look of a person who had witnessed their first intimate death, up close and personal. He was in mood to speak to her about changing, she knew about his little bottle of scotch in his desk drawer and she knew this is where he was headed so she just followed him. He was going to listen to her one way or another. 

The night shift staff that night got to see a head nurse get fired by a doctor! Marybeth was fired by Dr. Smythe, but she knew that she had to be dismissed by all the doctors at once, by a board review so she didn't fear him or his wrath. But she should have. The nurse staff had a small area where they lived off of the main building and the head nurse had a nice room to herself. So if something were to be done to her none of the staff would know because she didn't sleep in a dormitory atmosphere. 

Next morning the morning staff were lined up waiting for morning inspection at 6am, when they were all looking around, Marybeth was never late. She was always there at 5:30am watching them walk in and making sure everyone was there at the nurse station, this morning she was not there. Dr. Smythe was there and so were several of the other doctors and everyone was looking around waiting for the Tornado as they called her to show up. Elizbeth was the assistant head nurse and she took roll call and assigned the nurses to their stations for the day. Then she went to the head nurses room, the door was locked from the inside, this was very unusual, Marybeth never locked her door and she never slept in and never took a day off. Elizbeth called maintenance and had them unlock the door. 

Elizbeth walked in the dark room, the curtains still pulled shut. She walked to the window and pulled open the curtains and turned around and was horrified to see the scene that confronted her. She covered her mouth and couldn't speak or anything and stood motionless for several moments before she could do anything, then it registered what she was looking at, and she let loose a scream that could have woken the dead, if they had been able to wake up. The maintenance man who had been waiting outside the room came crashing through the door and spun on his heels as soon as he came in and saw the scene displayed on the bed in front of him. 

He gained his composure and grabbed a blanket off of the nearby chair and put over the body on the bed and escorted Elizbeth out of the room who was now violently shaking and crying hysterically. He sent one of the server boys from the kitchen to go get the police. While he was waiting one of the resident surgeons from the basement came up and made the confirmation that Marybeth was dead. About 8am the police showed up and went in to the room with the surgeon who determined her to be dead. This was the first murder at Athens, there had been deaths due to TB at Athens a suicide or two, but no murders. Every one thought because Marybeth ran everything with such an iron fist.  

The first officer on scene walked in the room and stopped short and spun around and bent over and everything he had, had for breakfast that morning was now all over the floor in the foyer to the head nurse quarters. The officer who followed him did the same and the one after him. Elizbeth called for the janitor to clean the floor up so no one came in and fell or the smell fouled some else up and they vomited too. The three officers once they had gained their composure at the gruesomeness of the site that had beholden them as they walked in the room. Started to look around for clues while the sketch artist and photographer took stills of the room and scene. They quickly scribbled notes in their notebooks and talked to one another. Then they asked if the photographer had gotten everything he needed so they could have the body moved to the morgue for processing. They took a couple more photos and then the gurney was called for and Marybeth was placed on it and a blanket covered her body and she was taken to the Morgue. The first officer then asked for a list of people on the premises that would have access to the quarters the night before and who were the last people to have been seen with Marybeth. 

Elizbeth got the lists for him while the other nurses took care of the day to day functions, but by now the hospital was a hive of activity and rumors about what was going on. Elizbeth tried to quell the rumors as best she could among the staff. The worst person for rumors was the youngest nurse who worked the TB wing. She always was in someone's business and telling a story about this or that. Elizbeth had heard by now that supposedly there was a blood bath going on in the Head nurse quarters. That Marybeth had been murdered and done in, in a really awful way by one of the doctors or patients she had had an argument with the night before. The fact that Marybeth had been done in, in an awful way was not the falsehood here, she had been dispatched in a very awful and horrendous way but that it had been done, by a staff member or patient the night before was just not true. 

“Ok, Miss Elizbeth who was the last person seen talking to Marybeth last night before she turned in for the night? Do you know who knows what time she turned in for the night?” The officer was looking at Elizbeth as if he were talking to a child. She didn't take kindly to that at all. Men in this area didn't think women had much in the way of brains, and always talked condescendingly to them. 

“Well, Officer the night watchmen Mr. Orvil said he saw her turn in to her quarters around 10pm. There was no one around except him and the night shift nurse and on call doctor who had been called about a TB patient who had suffered some complications.” She motioned to the night watchman, Mr. Orvil, who came over to speak with the Officer. “Yes, Sir, I saw Ms. Marybeth leave the main building around 10pm, she was talking to the Doctor about the patient and the medications to be prescribed through out the night and giving orders to the night nurse about it. They walked to the front door here and then she came inside and they walked back to the main building. After that I saw no one else come around the building and I do rounds every hour on the hour Sir. I have my notes here from last night if you'd like to see them. I usually have to turn them in to Ms. Marybeth every morning.” He handed over a notebook to the Officer who flipped through the pages really quick and made a couple of notes in his notebook and then handed it back to the night watchman.

“Ms. Elizbeth I am going to need to speak with that Doctor and Nurse.” The Officer then walked away dismissing her with a wave of his hand. Elizbeth was getting very annoyed with his constant dismissal and condescension of her. Like she was just some triviality that he wished he didn't have to deal with and this waving her away like she was annoying fly or something was going to get him a piece of her mind very soon. Her brother was an Officer on the Police force in the next county over and she was in half a mind to send word to him of how this Officer was treating her, he was in charge of the Force in that county and he would not take kindly to his kid-sister being treated this way. 

The doctor in the morgue had been autopsies for almost 20 years now and this young Officer was standing here watching him as if he was doing his very first one. Not to mention this was going to be hard anyway because this was a friend of his. Seeing her in this kind of state was hard. Seeing anyone in this kind of state was hard, but to see a friend in such a horrendous a way was much more difficult. The body of Marybeth had been stabbed so many times it was hard to count how many, because come cuts had merged with others, the Officer was now asking if the Doctor could tell what had made the stab wounds. “Officer If you don't mind can you just let me work, I will have a full report by mid afternoon, but i can not work with you hovering and you constantly asking me questions.”

The Officer stalked out of the morgue mad and as though his pride had just been smashed, but Dr. Carrothers needed peace and quiet to work. He was used to solitude down here, he liked to be isolated and work alone and with no one around. That's why he worked in the morgue as a n autopsy doctor. He worked slowly and meticulously inch by inch trying to find answers about Marybeth's death. About an inch from her Spine he saw something shiny, he got the long tweezers and poked around until he could get a hold of it and finally pulled free the tip of a knife. He finished his report by sundown, just as the Officers entered his quiet domain again. He had bagged up the knife tip and some other things he felt important like some hairs that didn't belong to Marybeth and some straw that had been in her hair. 

The Officers listened as Dr. Carrothers relayed all the information to them about how she had been alive when she had been hit over the back of the head with a heavy blunt object, then she had been stabbed 16 times in the back and then 24 times in the face, chest and stomach. He concluded that while she was being stabbed in the back the tip of the knife had broken off and lodged. He also said that she had been sexually molested as she had scratches and swelling around her vaginal area and thighs. He told them that this was a crime of hatred, some one had really hated her and wanted her to suffer. They had finally slit her throat to make sure she was dead. 

The Officers had never had to deal with such a heinous crime before so they were at a loss, they were going to have to call in someone who had dealt with this sort of thing before. He was a Pinkerton Detective out of Saint Louis. Detective. Monroe. They went back and told the grounds keeper to block off the building and then told the night watchman that they were posting an Officer to make sure no one went in or out of the quarters until Detective Monroe arrived and could see the scene for himself and tell what had happened and help them with the case. 

Elizbeth finally got to sleep at 11 am that morning, she didn't sleep well though because she kept seeing the horrific scene of Marybeth lying on her back half naked with her insides out and slashed all to bits and the look of horror and the silent scream that was etched into Marybeth's features. Elizbeth couldn't help but wonder of all the people here who didn't like Marybeth who could possibly have done this and gone this far? This was beyond extreme and hatred. This making a point to the extreme and going beyond necessary. It was scary to know there was someone out there like this in, on or around the property and it was terrifying to know that the police had to call someone in to figure out how to deal with it. These people were supposed to be able to protect them, and here they were unable to do even a simple investigation into a death without help. 

The head Officer in charge of the case was middle aged and kept telling everyone how he knew so much, yet here he was calling for help from a Pinkerton Detective. He hadn't even looked at the evidence in the case yet, what was he waiting for?