By Joe Hart

Boscobel Dial

BOSCOBEL — June brought shocking new developments in the ongoing hunt to locate Boscobel’s missing 1973 time capsule. 

The Dial received anonymous letters from an unknown person or persons claiming to have the time capsule in their possession. 

The correspondences were written by cutting individual letters out of magazines and newspapers, including the Dial itself, and glueing them to a sheet of heavy paper. 

The first letter, received on June 19, read:

“People of Boscobel we have your time capsule…”

The second, which followed on June 20, read:

“It has not been harmed… plz await instructions.”

Law enforcement remained tight-lipped about the ongoing investigation, but Chief Travis Dregne told the Dial the letters were “suspicious.”

In addition to fingerprints, he said it’s likely that saliva, dry skin, or other DNA evidence can be extracted from the letters, especially considering how they were constructed. 

“It would be virtually impossible to put a letter like this together without leaving some traces of DNA,” he said. 

An exhaustive search

Katrina Jones, who co-chaired last year’s sesquicentennial celebration committee, has led a sweeping hunt for the missing time capsule.

Newspaper announcements for the 1973 centennial celebration mention the capsule—but Jones has personally leafed through hundreds of subsequent issues of the Dial and found no mention of its location. 

Jones and other committee members spoke to dozens of Boscobel residents who might have remembered the 1973 celebrations, but none could locate the capsule. 

The committee searched the Community First Bank’s vault, City Hall, and the public library to no avail. During maintenance of the park next to the library, the city dismantled the pedestal and excavated its foundation following up on a tip that the capsule might be hidden beneath it. 

Jones said she had no guesses as to the identity of the anonymous letter-writer. 

Some doubt capsule’s existence

Nancy Rutherford served on the committee that placed a time capsule at Boscobel’s Depot Museum in 1998. Based on that experience, she’s expressed doubts about whether the 1973 capsule actually exists. 

“It takes a lot of planning,” she said. “It’s not like you can just decide to have a time capsule in a couple of weeks.”

Her committee, she explained, sent out multiple calls to the public for contributions for the time capsule and publicized the events in the Dial. That year’s fourth-grade class was chosen to open the time capsule in 2048. The contents of the capsule were on display at the Tuffley center, and a celebration accompanied its burial by the museum. 

“I just don’t know how there could have been a time capsule without some record,” she said. “My conclusion is that they had good intentions, but they just couldn’t do it, or somebody dropped the ball.”

— This is a developing story and will be updated as information becomes available.