A Dead Man's Card Surfaces: The Elliot Vass Mystery

A Dead Man's Card Surfaces: The Elliot Vass Mystery

Cold October light, a waterlogged library card, and a dead man's name stamped through to October 14, 1983 - then the card turns up six weeks after his burial and thirty-four years later resurfaces in a ditch. Why did Elliot Vass's final checkout stamp postdate his death, and what happened to the county infrastructure survey the card belonged to?

In this episode, we follow the discovery and the small-town records that refuse to align: a fisherman pulls a sealed, creased checkout card from Sully Creek; a librarian catalogs the inconsistencies; and an infrastructure hobbyist's death intersects with missing county documents. How could a library card stamped after September 3, 1983, appear behind an 1848 brick wall and later in a drainage ditch?

Person: Elliot Vass Date of death: September 3, 1983 Age: 41 Location: Pellham, Orin County, Indiana Last stamp on card: October 14, 1983

- Raymond Campbell found the waterlogged library card on his fourth pull of a trotline in Sully Creek drainage ditch. - The checkout card had twelve purple date stamps, the last reading October 14, 1983. - Elliot Vass was buried six weeks before his library card received its final stamp. - One checked-out book, a 1971 civil engineering county infrastructure survey, ceased to appear in library records after 1983. - The checkout card was delivered to Pellham Public Library inside a ziplock bag in late November 2017.

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