The year was 1945. Earl Custiss had just returned home from the War in Europe. Upon arriving home, the first thing he did was call on Sylvia McPherson. Earl and Sylvia had been high school sweethearts, both graduating from high school in Piscataway in 1941. Most folks assumed the two of them would settle down together shortly afterwards, and Earl had secured a good job at the auto plant in Linden. Little did they know what would happen that December, and Earl was drafted into the service early in 1942.
Earl was off to basic training on February 15, 1942. Sylvia assumed a marriage proposal was coming as part of the two sweethearts’ Valentine’s Day plans, but as the night wore on, she grew to learn Earl had no plans of getting down on one knee. That night, as he dropped her off at her home in his car, she begged him to elope that night and make it official before he went off to fight.
The thing was, Earl secretly had a desire to see the world during and after the war. He wasn’t ready to settle down yet, and he wanted to sow his oats with some of the English and French girls he planned to meet. He left Sylvia in tears that evening, and though they made no plans of breaking up, Earl went to Europe without offering engagement.
Earl fought through the war and wrote to Sylvia regularly, even if he noticed her responses became less frequent and more distant. But the war had changed him. The carnage and destruction led Earl to realize that the love of someone like Sylvia was the most important thing he could ever have, and he’d seen enough of the world during the war to know that New Jersey was not such a bad place to settle down.
And so, that summer day in 1945, still in uniform, Earl showed up to meet Sylvia. And he finally had that ring in his pocket.
He was beyond shocked to find Sylvia already had a ring on her finger. She explained that she had fallen out of love with him and met an older man, James Newberry, who had been too old to be drafted in 1941. She explained that Newberry had become wealthy by starting a tree trimming business from scratch and building it into a large company. He had devoted his life to the business and was finally ready to settle down. She explained that she never loved James like she had loved Earl, but James was a kind man who offered her a stable life.
Earl seethed inside, but asked if he could meet James. Sylvia thought it wasn’t a great idea, but agreed to the meeting against her better judgement, and took Earl to see their nice new home that evening.
It wasn’t until three days later that police came to check on Sylvia and James, and found a grizzly scene of a double murder. Earl was the only real suspect and quickly confessed. The tragedy was compounded when Earl revealed that he flew into a rage when James proudly let Earl know that the married couple was expecting.
Earl was executed for his crimes in 1949. He went to the electric chair having confessed to all but one thing: He took to his grave the location of what he had done after he severed Sylvia’s left ring finger. He explained that he had killed James first, but forced Sylvia to take her ring off her finger and place the one in his pocket on before he killed her. He took the finger with him when he left the crime scene, a strange and shocking memento of his former sweetheart.
But his prison cellmate would later tell tales of Earl leaving it near a cemetery, and making plans to come visit it as the years went by. Plans that clearly never came to fruition due to his swift arrest by authorities. Local residents have strongly believed this to be the area of the severed finger and ring, although no one has ever found it, and finally, a housing complex was built next to the cemetery.
This cache is part of the Socially Distanced Halloween series. A number is listed on the log sheet that will allow you to find the bonus mystery cache, The Mysterious Outbreak of 1720. There is room in this cache for swag and trackables. The log is small but the cache contains a pencil.
Here are the other caches in the series: