Question: Suicides and Soap Mummies: July 4, 2008

In which I seek the name of an adipocered teacher.

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I need some help. In every sense of the phrase.

A few years back, I read about a true-“crime” case that’s remained stuck in my head ever since — well, maybe I should say it’s remained kind of stuck, because I can’t for the life of me remember any of the vital details. No names, no places, no dates. And, of course, it’s driving me batty not knowing these things. I’ve tried my bookmarks, I’ve tried Google, I’ve been through every Wikipedia list of suicides and drowning victims, I’ve even combed the Morbid Fact du Jour archives — I’ve tried everything. So now I’m trying you.

The story goes something like this:

A female teacher/headmistress of a girl’s school/college disappears without a trace (I think this happened in the 1930s, but I could be wrong). It is assumed that she either committed suicide or had a boating accident. (I seem to recall that she was reputedly distraught over a love affair, but again, I could be wrong.) Some years later, a lake/pond on the campus grounds is dragged during a search for another missing local; in the process, a woman’s body is brought up from the bottom. The body is remarkably well-preserved, being at least partially saponified/adipocerated (meaning she was basically turned into a “soap mummy”), but it quickly deteriorates upon exposure to air. This is assumed to be the missing teacher.

And now you see why I am kind of leery of doing any more personal Googling on this issue, because spending an entire morning typing in search phrases like “adipocere headmistress lake suicide” and “soap mummy pond boating accident girls’ school” probably land you on some kind of government watch list.

But anyway. If you know anything about this, or if your Google-fu is up to the task, please let me know — every little bit of info helps. I’ll update this page when/if I ever find some facts to go with the story.

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