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Dixon’s Bloody Gulch Road has haunting history

If you’ve ever exited Interstate 88 at Dixon, Illinois, you’ve probably seen the sign for Bloody Gulch Road. Residents and travelers have come to em...

If you've ever exited Interstate 88 at Dixon, Illinois, you've probably seen the sign for Bloody Gulch Road. Residents and travelers have come to embrace the gory name -- and its history that dates back more than 100 years.

"It was September 1885, and a farmer noticed that his cattle were skittish, I'll say," explained Patrick Gorman, president of the Lee County Historical and Genealogical Society.

As it turns out, there was a reason for the animals' unrest. In a ditch near the road was the body of 17-year-old  Frank Thiel, a traveling Bible salesman from Elgin, Illinois.

"He had been murdered with a club and a knife, I believe," said Gorman.

Stored on microfilm at the Historical and Genealogical Society, old articles from the Dixon Evening Telegraph give all the gory details of the Bloody Gulch Murder. Police quickly arrested a local farmhand named Joseph Mosse, a French Canadian whom the police called "Frenchy."

His trial was covered extensively in the newspaper, but Gorman says the evidence used to convict Mosse is now considered somewhat questionable.

"He had a jacket that he wore, and it had stains on it that they thought to be blood. The technology wasn't there to test it to see if it was human blood or not, but they just assumed it was human blood," said Gorman. "The man worked on a farm, it could have been anything."

Mosse spent 25 years in the Joliet Penitentiary until the Governor ordered his early release on Christmas Day, 1911.

"He saved the life of a prison guard who was attacked by another inmate," explained Gorman.

Legend has it that Mosse then returned to Canada, never heard from again in Dixon, Illinois.

His story lives on today, though, in the road signs that greet residents and visitors.

"Yeah, welcome to Dixon," laughed Gorman.

The full story of Bloody Gulch Road is available in a book published by the Loveland Museum called The Bloody Gulch Murder: The Crime in Which Dumb Beasts Were the Accusers.

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