Police Investigate Chase Andrews’s Death

The investigation into Chase Andrews’s death begins with the appearance of a fall and gathers force through absences: no footprints leading to the tower, no fingerprints on its surfaces, and no clear trace of how Chase reached the place where he died. Ed Jackson and Joe Purdue treat those gaps not as a lack of evidence but as evidence in their own right. The open grate above the fatal drop makes an accident look possible while also suggesting that someone could have arranged the scene to resemble one.

The Body and the First Anomaly

Ed Jackson and Vern Murphy estimate that Chase has been dead for at least ten hours, though they leave the precise interval to the coroner. Ed’s initial reconstruction is that Chase climbed the tower the previous night and fell from its top. The body’s skyward stare and open mouth make the death physically immediate, while the town’s long familiarity with Chase—once a charming child and star quarterback, later a handsome man who married the prettiest girl—sharpens the contrast between his public life and his solitary, mud-streaked end.

That first explanation falters when Ed considers the people who might have been with Chase. The tower is a place where couples come to make out, and Ed and Vern exchange a knowing look at the possibility that Chase had brought another woman there despite being married. Yet the boys who found the body say they stopped short and backed away as soon as they recognized him. Ed points out that there are no other fresh prints near the body: if companions had witnessed a fall, they would likely have run over, knelt beside him, or tried to see whether he was alive. Their absence leaves both the supposed company and the supposed accident uncertain.

Tracks and the Open Grate

Footprints from the staircase lead across the bog to within eight feet of Chase. Ed asks Benji whether they belong to the boys; Benji confirms that they went only that far and then backed up. Ed and Purdue distinguish these fresh tracks from what the scene ought to contain. Chase must have crossed the mud to reach the stairs, yet there are no footprints attributable to him going toward the tower or away from it. The investigators search for evidence that someone brushed tracks out, but find neither other prints nor signs of their removal.

The tower itself supplies a more pointed clue. At the top, an iron grate forms part of the floor above the stairs; beyond it, square grates ring a central platform of weathered wooden planks. When closed, the grates can be walked on safely. When left open, one creates a drop of sixty feet. Ed and Purdue find one of these perimeter grates open, and below it the mud holds the precise outline of Chase’s distorted body, surrounded by splashed yellowish matter and duckweed. The body’s position links the open grate to the fall, but does not explain why it was open.

Ed notes that people sometimes forget to close the grate above the stairs, but the other grates are almost never left open. He therefore asks why anyone would have opened the one Chase fell through. His working possibility is deliberate: someone may have planned to push another person through it. Leaving the grate open afterward could then make the death appear accidental, since a person who had fallen could not close it. This is an investigative hypothesis, not yet proof of who opened the grate or how Chase came to fall.

Negative Evidence and a Changed Assessment

A later review gives the investigators a formal interval for the death: between midnight and two in the morning, October 29 to 30, 1969. The physical search has produced no fresh fingerprints on the railing or grates apart from those associated with the two boys, and none from Chase. There is likewise no sign that Chase walked over the mud, climbed the tower, or opened either of the two grates at the top. The empty record is especially striking because each ordinary step in the apparent accident should have left a trace.

Ed calls this negative data. He and Purdue consider two possible explanations: someone cleaned the surfaces and removed the tracks, or Chase was killed elsewhere and his body transported to the tower. Purdue points out that moving the body by vehicle ought to leave tire tracks, prompting them to plan another search for tread marks beyond their own and the ambulance’s. At this stage, the investigation has not established which explanation is correct, but Ed is confident that the death was no accident. The missing traces have changed the case from an apparent fall into a suspected homicide, even as the evidence remains too incomplete to identify a perpetrator.

Forensic Findings and Unresolved Clues

The medical report clarifies how the fall relates to Chase’s death. Bruising and internal injuries are consistent with a substantial fall. Chase struck the back of his head on a beam; matching blood and hair samples place that impact at the tower. The injury damaged the posterior lobe but did not itself kill him. The report identifies the fatal cause as sudden impact to the occipital and parietal areas of the posterior cerebral cortex, together with a severed spine, resulting from the fall. These findings establish that Chase died where he was found and had not been moved there after death, narrowing the possibilities without explaining the absent tracks and prints.

The report also gives the investigators a physical trace they can pursue: numerous foreign fibers on Chase’s jacket, identified as red wool and not from his own clothes. Ed displays the sample in a small plastic bag. Purdue lists possibilities such as a sweater, scarf, or hat, and Ed stresses that the source could be any kind of wool garment and must be found. The fibers do not identify a person or prove how they came to be on the jacket; they turn an otherwise unexplained detail into a search for a specific missing object.

Significance in the Investigation

The inquiry moves by testing the ordinary story of a fall against the material scene. The open grate can support the appearance of an accident, but its unusual position also raises the possibility of a staged one. The body outline, the beam’s matching blood and hair, and the autopsy establish the place and physical mechanism of death; the absent footprints and fingerprints point toward concealment, while the red wool fibers offer a separate lead. Together, the findings make deliberate interference increasingly difficult to ignore, but they do not yet resolve who was present, what garment left the fibers, or how the traces disappeared.