William Stevens Flynn, the young man who shot himself with suicidal intent while in company with his sweetheart, Miss Alice Wilkins of Beverly, on the Bass river bridge, Beverly, last Friday night, died at the Beverly hospital at shortly after 6 o'clock last evening.
The details of the affair, together with the nature of his injuries, are matters of recent recital and will be readily recalled. Flynn, who resided with his parents at 26 1-2 Peabody street, had been in the habit of spending nearly every evening with Miss Wilkins at her home on Chase street, Beverly.
Last Friday night the young couple went to walk about 10:30 o'clock. Their path lay through Pope's lumber yard on the bank of the river. He told the girl that there was no possibility of their marrying, and that he could not live without her. She was a Protestant and he a Catholic.
He then threatened to make way with himself. The two walked out to the bridge leading to Rial side. Here they stopped again, leaned on the rail, and talked again in the same strain. All at once he started down upon the pier from her, saying, "Good bye, Alice, I will not take you with me, for you say you love me and want to live, but I am going to put an end to my miserable life. When you hear a shot you will know it is all over with me. Go home, dear, and let them find me here."
Thereupon he knelt in prayer, within a few feet of where the girl stood, concluding by placing a pistol to his head, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet had entered the right eye, pierced that optic, passed through the bones of the nose, through the left eye, and imbedded itself in the bony framework of the head. Death, it would seem, would be preferable to a life which must ever be sightless. In case he had lived he would always have been totally blind and horribly disfigured. At no time since the affair have the hospital physicians been hopeful of his recovery, although there have been brief periods when he seemed to be more comfortable.
My final efforts in this affair were to locate Flynn's grave. A few weeks back, while returning from Danvers, I pulled into St. Mary's. I knew it was a futile proposition to try to locate the grave by driving through, as St Mary's is such a large cemetery. But I was in the area, so I figured I had little to lose. The only problem was it looked like it was going to rain soon. As I entered the cemetery, the wind began to whip hard, blowing leaves and swaying trees. It blew in the frantic manner it does when a horrible thunderstorm is readying to strike, and the sky darkened into that scary ominous twilight. It was almost as if Flynn himself didn't want me poking around. As I slowly wove my way through, reading names on stones near the road, the sky began to spit, and as it did, I heard the mournful calls of bagpipes. I cracked the window, and as I inched along, I saw an old man standing in the rain under a rather large tree. He was looking at me and playing the bag pipes. It was weird. He didn't seem to care about the thunderstorm. I kept inching through the narrow lanes, reading stones as the wipers swatted away the sprinkles. I did see a few "Flynns" as I drove along, but each proved to not be the correct Flynn. As I hurried back to the car from inspecting one of the false Flynns, I noticed two crows sitting on a stone away in the field. They seemed to have no business being there. They were pecking at the stone and each other. At this point, I was getting a little creeped out, thunder was grumbling and the rain had picked up, so I decided not to trudge in and investigate. I worked my way back to a gate on North Street. As I approached it, the sky opened up. And upon reaching the gate, a frightful bolt of lightning arced down from the sky and blasted a place in the cemetery among the stones about 50 yards away from me and slightly behind. It was loud and made that jarring ripping noise they do when so close. Figuring it was a sign from Flynn himself, I cast off my case of the creeps, pulled out onto North Street, and re-entered the cemetery at the next entrance, which was close to where the bolt had hit. I inched along, trying to read names though the rain splattered windows, but alas, no luck.
A few days later, I contacted the archdiocese and got the exact coordinates (range and lot) of Flynn's grave. An errand hauling a load of lumber brought me near the cemetery so I stopped in the office and got the physical location of the stone from the range and lot. I trudged over and found the stone, right where the lightning had hit.
The odd thing is that there is no other writing on the stone aside from what you see in the picture. There are no dates. The other side of the stone is bare.. I presume that the family didn't want mystics or souvenir hunters finding the stone, thus they left it simple as possible. I don't know who the name Terrell specifies. Maybe another suicide case. This is a good mystery with possibly more interesting story behind it, but my research here is done for now.
I hope you enjoyed learning the story of Flynn.