The Upright Shoe: How a Crawlspace Hid a Woman's Last Twelve Minutes

The Upright Shoe: How a Crawlspace Hid a Woman's Last Twelve Minutes

A single black leather shoe, laces tied and sole clean, sat upright in four inches of standing water inside a sealed crawlspace beneath a building that "did not exist" in official records - and a woman named Emily Powell vanished on a twelve-minute walk home twelve days earlier. What was Emily doing between Mercer Street and Calloway Place, and why did a shoe end up in a crawlspace under an unacknowledged building?

In this episode, we lay out the sequence of discoveries, documents, and interviews that shaped the case from the first missing persons report to the crawlspace find. We follow the routine that stopped on May 2, 1923, the steps detective Jerry Stevens took, and the unanswered question that tied a shoe to a sealed building.

Person: Emily Powell
Date: May 2, 1923 (disappearance); May 14, 1923 (crawlspace discovery)
Location: Mercer Street to Calloway Place route; crawlspace at 412 Delmont Avenue
Detective: Jerry Stevens, age 44, 16 years on Crestfield force
Findings: black leather woman's shoe upright in four inches of standing water; no other shoe or foot present

- Emily Powell was 38 years old and worked as a bookkeeper for a wholesale dry goods company on Mercer Street.
- Emily left her office at approximately 5:30 PM on May 2, 1923, and began a twelve-minute walk home she had taken hundreds of times.
- A missing persons report was filed with the Crestfield Police Department on the morning of May 4, 1923.
- County surveyor Curtis Sanders opened a crawlspace hatch at 412 Delmont Avenue on May 14, 1923, and recorded "found: woman's shoe. blk leather, upright, crawl space, four twelve Delmont" in his field book.
- The building under which the crawlspace was located was described by the fire marshal's office as not existing in official records.

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