No source noted, February 5, 1923, from an unidentified scrapbook of clippings titled COLLECTION OF LOCAL MONROE COUNTY OBITS donated to the Monroe County History Center, Bloomington, Indiana. FARMER DISCOVERS MISS ESTHER BECK, MISSING 3 DAYS Daughter of Ex-superintendent of Bloomington Schools Expires Wile Man Goes for Aid Bloomington, Ind., Feb. 4-Miss Esther Beck, 26 years old, daughter of James K. Beck, for whom all Bloomington has searched since her mysterious disappearance from her South College Avenue home last Thursday evening at 4:45 o'clock, is dead. She was found at nine o'clock this morning within a short distance of the Garrison Chapel Church, about eight miles due west of Bloomington, by Melvin Reeves, 29 years old, who was on his way to attend Sunday School at the church. He was passing through the John Hemross farm following a well-beaten path to the chapel when he heard the moans of the dying girl whose death was caused from exposure in being out in the heavy rain of Friday morning and the zero weather today. Reeves hurried in the direction of the sound and came upon Miss Beck lying in a field close to a thicket. She had evidently fought her way through. She had emerged through the thicket minus her hat and shoes and had crossed a rail fence, evidently falling to the ground in an exhausted condition. She was within 300 yards of the Hemross home. After finding the young woman, Reeves ran to the Hemross home for help and when he returned a few moments later, he found the girl dead. The finding of Miss Beck came while two detectives from an Indianapolis agency were closeted with relatives of the family. Maps were being gone over of the west part of the country and a crowd of several hundred citizens were ready to go out again and search the country. At the same time, a crew of men had started work dragging the Monon railroad lake west of the city. The body was brought back to the city. By a prearranged agreement, the blowing of a factory whistle was a signal to the citizens of the city that the body had been found. Hundreds of persons gathered to hear the details. Miss Beck came from one of Bloomington's leading families. She had lacked only two months of finishing a four-year nurses' training course in the City Hospital in Indianapolis when her health broke down during the Christmas holidays. She seemed to be getting better. On Wednesday she left her home for a 2-hour walk, and the next day she told her mother she wished to walk again. She was to have gone to the home of her sister, Mrs. Culmer, wife of Dr. W. N. Culmer, about six blocks away, for supper, and when later in the evening it was found she had not arrived there, a search was started. Mrs. William Buzzaird and Frank Thompson gave the only clue that she had started out the White Hall Pike as both remembered seeing her on that road about five o'clock Thursday evening. The general search that started Friday morning did not extend to the Garrison Church but was more to the north of it. As Miss Beck was frail in statue, it was not thought her strength would have been sufficient to have taken her that far away. Funeral services will be held Tuesday morning at ten o'clock at the First Methodist Church.