THE MURDER CAR

​Two men in a “murder car” intersected with a man from Easton, MA, at 10:30 pm on a night in April of 1920. Frank McKenna, foreman at Daley’s Corner Garage on Washington Street, was working when two well-dressed men in their twenties walked into the garage to purchase gas. Their car had stalled a short distance away. McKenna, as he helped the men add 3 gallons of gas to their car, failed to notice the bloody handprints on the car windows, the clots of blood in the car and on the running board, or the blood-soaked felt hat under the seat. Although he did comment later that one of the men looked nervous.

Weirdly, the men asked Mr. McKenna if he wanted to purchase their car for $800. McKenna replied that he didn’t even have 800 cents and the next morning relayed the exchange to his boss, Lawrence Donlan, of Easton, who in turn called the Fields Corner Police Station with the information, as that morning he had happened to read a story in the newspaper about a missing man from Providence RI. The missing man’s car’s license plate was RI 8843, the same number McKenna had noticed on the vehicle he’d serviced the night before and relayed to Donlan.
The vehicle, RI 8843, had been found abandoned in Dorchester in the early hours and was covered in blood. The car belonged to the missing man’s brother, Irving Eklund, who owned the taxi business for whom Oliver Eklund drove two evenings a week. Oliver was the foreman of a jewelry establishment and engaged to be married. A search for the missing man was conducted along Washington Street in Easton, including Ames’ estates and woods, as it was the main road from Providence to Boston and the “murder car” had briefly stopped there.
Long story short, it’s thought that perhaps the brother Irving Eklund was the intended victim as he often carried large sums of money on him. The actual victim, Oliver, is thought to have been killed by a sharp instrument to the head and was likely attacked somewhere early in the drive between Providence and Taunton. He’d been hired to drive the two men (who stated they were from New York) to Taunton. Possibly the motive was robbery, or they argued over possession of the car. In an odd turn of events, the vehicle, RI 8843, had gone off the road as early as Wade’s Corner in RI and two nearby men who worked for the railway had offered their help. On hearing groans from an impaired man in the backseat of the car, they asked if he was alright and were told the man was drunk. The railway crew members and a motor truck driver helped the car out of the ditch, not realizing the man in the backseat was a victim and the two in the front were crooks.
Mr. Eklund’s body was found days later by two boys searching in a rowboat, lying in a small pond on Highland Street in Taunton. Eklund was fully clothed with his pockets turned inside out. It’s thought he was probably thrown out of the murder car sometime after Wade’s Corner and staggered to his death.
The two crooks were arrested but later released. There is no follow-up information available.
Evil passed through Easton that Sunday night, stopping briefly at Daley’s Corner.
 

Anne Wooster Drury

 
Sources:
> Member Paul Berry provided research for this story.
> Boston Daily Globe (1872-1922) ProQuest Historical Newspapers, April 27, April 28, May 1, May 10.