How a N.Y. Officer Uncovered 'Fowl' Play to Save Families' Thanksgiving
By Johnathan Croyle
Source syracuse.com
Imagine waking up Thanksgiving morning and finding that your turkey, the centerpiece of your holiday meal, had disappeared during the night.
Poof. Gone. Flown the coop.
That was the situation facing two Syracuse families on Nov. 22, 1951, when Irene Masters, of 216 Otisco St., discovered that the 18-pound gobbler she had purchased with her friend Marie Schmid, of 639 Geddes St., had vanished.
They had split the $8.34 bill for the bird the day before, which was to feed them, their husbands, and Masters’ three children.
But it looked like they would be stuck eating just the “fixings” when Mrs. Masters had found her turkey missing.
How could this have happened?
The night before Thanksgiving, the Masters had hosted a holiday party for friends.
“Their turkey was too husky for the ice box,” the Post-Standard reported, so they had put out on the front porch to keep it cold. The Herald-Journal, meanwhile, reported that the women put it out on the roof.
(Yes, both of Syracuse’s newspapers told the story of the missing turkey.)
Evidently, when the party broke up at 1:30 a.m., a “party guest took a fancy” to the turkey and went home with it.
Someone had “snitched” it.
Masters called the police.
Enter the very determined and very dedicated Patrolman Richard Haley who went out to investigate the “fowl play.”
He asked Mrs. Masters for a guest list of everyone who was at the party, and then, early on Thanksgiving morning, started banging on doors.
His dedication to the mission brought results.
“I asked a fellow what he was going to have for dinner, and he told me duck,” Haley said. “I looked in the icebox and, sure enough, there was a duck, but right next to it was the turkey.”
Haley also recovered $3.30 which had been stolen from Mrs. Masters’ purse.
The officer returned the money and the turkey to the grateful families, who were so thankful they decided not to press charges on the thief.
“Her leniency may have been affected by the fact that the man who took the bird had it cleaned and stuffed,” the Post-Standard said.
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