UNKNOWN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN OHIO , IN 1933

 UNKNOWN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN OHIO , IN 1933

It's the day before Christmas Eve when a young woman is seen at the Greyhound bus station in the town of Willoughby. It is unknown where she comes from, but what we know is that she travels to the train station, where she nervously buys a ticket to Corry, Pennsylvania.

In Corry, the girl will never arrive.

That afternoon several inhabitants of the town meet her, as beautiful in her blue suit as her eyes; Many people notice her, having never seen her before: she has red hair and high cheekbones, as if she came from afar. Soon the young woman, in the cold of December, takes refuge in Mary Judd's small guesthouse, but without giving any name. It is there that she spends the night, before leaving in the morning, after inquiring about religious services and settling her bill with her landlady. Mary remembers her as a young woman with kind manners: although she was apparently in a hurry, before going out she found time to wish the woman a Merry Christmas.

The hours pass, the young girl wanders through the streets of the town until she heads to a level crossing.

Under the horrified eyes of witnesses, the girl in blue drops her luggage and appears to throw herself onto the tracks just as a train is arriving. Her impact is devastating: her body is thrown away, and unfortunately there will be nothing that can be done for her. Incredibly, however, the undertaker's autopsy finds her practically intact. Her terrible head trauma is recognized as the cause of her death, but not a drop of blood has stained her blue coat.

In her bag there were a few coins, some pencils and no documents: it would take sixty years to discover her name.

Meanwhile, the unknown young woman is buried in the town, and more than three thousand inhabitants go to her funeral. It was the citizens who paid for her tomb, and kept it in good condition, always hoping that someone would come forward to identify it.

1993

Realtor Ed Sekerak, leafing through the day's News Herald, notices an article commemorating the girl's death. Incredibly, the girl reminds him of something; he himself had sold a farm to the young woman's family. With his wife's help, he starts searching through her old papers, and finally reports to the state what she has discovered, solving a sixty-year-old mystery: the twenty-three-year-old was called Josephine Klimczak. Her parents, however, never knew the tragic end of her daughter: they had both died, in fact, already two years after Josephine.