Colonel George Leander Shepley was the wealthy president of a Providence insurance company, with a host of servants and a summer home in Warwick Neck. On the Sunday morning of July 31, 1921, he went out onto his beach too discover a female body washed up against the seawall.

The police and medical examiner were called to the scene. The body was a distance from the shore, carried by high tides and winds. The face, which was buried in the sand, displayed a bruise over the left eye and a wound on the left side of the forehead. The face was pitted with indentations caused by rocks and pebbles pressing against it.

It was determined that the body had been in the water for less than 24 hours. Due to the freshly coagulated blood on the wound, and the fact that no water was found in the woman’s lungs, a deep suspicion of foul play hung over the mystery. She was estimated to be between 45 and 50 years old and was clad in a black coat, black skirt, black shoes and stockings. She weighed about 120 pounds and had gray-streaked dark hair and good dental health. The body was held at the undertaking rooms of Charles Greene Hill in East Greenwich, pending identification.

The previous morning, a steward had been making his rounds aboard the steamer ‘Georgia’ after the load of passengers from New York had disembarked at Providence. In one stateroom, it appeared someone had abandoned their belongings. The steward found a blue satin dress trimmed with lace, a black straw hat trimmed with pink ribbons, a pair of eyeglasses, a handkerchief stitched with the letter ‘M’, a ticket from New York to Providence, purchased the previous day, and a black purse containing 47 cents.

Upon discovery of the abandoned items, someone from the steamer company contacted police and an investigation was begun. Inside the purse, a piece of paper was found containing the words, “In case of sickness or accident, notify Miss Sarah Oates, Huntington, Long Island, New York.” Police immediately sent a telegram to that address, describing the belongings left in the room. Sarah sent a reply, informing police that her sister Maria, also known as Mollie, had left for Providence on Friday night and was wearing clothing that matched the description. The next contact police had with Sarah was to inform her of the body washed up on the Warwick shore.

On Aug. 2, another of Mollie’s sisters, 54-year-old Ellen (Oates) Langille, came to Rhode Island with her husband William. Mollie and her seven siblings were the sons and daughters of James and Celia Oates, who were both deceased. Ellen and William identified the clothing and other effects at the police station as belonging to Mollie. They then visited Greene’s undertaking rooms to claim the body.

It had initially been the opinion of the medical examiner that Mollie had been robbed and killed before being thrown into the water. It was difficult to believe that anyone would travel with only 47 cents and the assumption was that she’d had more and it had been stolen. Supporting the theory was the fact that death was not due to drowning and there was evidence of a concussion of the brain as well as other head injuries.

However a male passenger of the steamship, after learning of a female body being located on the beach, contacted the medical examiner and told him that he had been sitting on the lower deck of steamer early on Saturday morning when the boat was just off the Warwick shoreline. He heard a splash and then saw a dark, motionless object in the water but did not suppose it was a person. Members of the Oates family alleged that Mollie, a 50-year-old nurse, suffered from melancholia and had been in a very nervous state for the past several weeks. Based on the new information the medical examiner altered his opinion. He decided that Mollie had either jumped from the boat with suicidal intent or fell during a period of depression and struck her head upon something projecting from the boat. The wounds to her face, he now felt were caused by the body being washed and dragged across rocks on the beach.    

The Town of Warwick released the body to Ellen and William and it was transported back to New York where Mollie lived. She was buried with her parents in Saint Patrick’s Cemetery in Huntington.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.