The wooden casket of Mathilda Lorenz — well, most of it — departed from Wyman Park Thursday morning, just as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Letitia Getka of Remington was wrapping up a jog along the North Baltimore park around 7:45 a.m. when she saw the bottom of the casket poking out from the bed of a battered teal pickup truck.

“I saw this teal pickup emerging from the trail area,” said Getka, 37. “I’ve never seen a truck down there before and my first thought was, ‘They went and got that damn coffin!’”

A teal pickup truck carrying an empty coffin in the bed of the truck drives away from a park.
Letitia Getka saw this teal pickup truck with Maryland plates driving away from Wyman Park with the casket on the morning of July 21, 2022. (Courtesy of Letitia Getka)

Getka said she saw a man in his 40s or 50s in the passenger seat of the pickup truck, which had Maryland plates. She did not see the driver, but observed the truck turning north out of the park, as if heading to Hampden.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

“I wonder where it’s going to end up,” said Getka, who works in marketing. “I just hope it finds a good home.”

The empty casket had caught the imagination of Baltimoreans after it appeared along the banks of the Stony Run in the North Baltimore park last week. Most of the wood appeared to be quite old and a silver plaque read: “Mathilda Lorenz; Died July 26, 1882. Aged 18 years, 2 months and 1 day.”

Getka snapped a few photos of the casket being hauled away and posted one to Reddit, where Baltimoreans were speculating about the coffin’s origins. “The casket was so strange to see in person,” wrote one commenter. “It does raise the question: where’s Mathilda’s body?”

Since The Baltimore Banner first wrote about the coffin, many amateur genealogists have dug through historical records to try to find information about Mathilda Lorenz. Several unearthed immigration records showed a Mathilda Lorenz, born in 1863, who immigrated to this country from what was then called Bohemia in Eastern Europe. But this Mathilda Lorenz did not die in 1882. She married a man named Wilhelm Hempel in 1889 at Zion Lutheran Church and lived until 1954, according to records found by Shelley Arnold, who specializes in German-American genealogy.

Mathilda Lorenz Hempel lived on Gay Street and East North Avenue before heading to her final resting place in Baltimore Cemetery, said Arnold, who was initially contacted by Banner reader Gina Lofaro.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

A relative of this Mathilda Lorenz also wrote to The Banner after the story appeared. Stephen Wagner said that Mathilda Lorenz was his great-great aunt. “Perhaps she was expected to pass on that date in 1882 but lived to see another day. That would explain why the coffin was not actually used ... as a coffin, that is. What a mystery! My very-much-still-living, 96-year-old mother certainly met Mathilda Hempel (nee Lorenz) a few times,” he wrote.

Of course, it’s possible that another Mathilda Lorenz had been interred in the coffin. It is unclear how or why the body was removed from the coffin. Or perhaps no one had been buried inside? While much of the wood seemed to be quite old, certain portions were new and some of the screws that affixed the handles were made after 1932.

Readers of The Banner also helped pinpoint when the casket arrived in the park, although it is still unclear who left it there and why. Artist Jennifer Wilfong said she saw two young men unloading a coffin from a car near Wyman Park on Friday, July 8. And Tara Brooky snapped and posted photos of the coffin by the stream two days later. At that point, the lid of the casket was largely intact resting on the lower section of the casket. A few days later, the lid lay in pieces.

Thursday afternoon, the shattered lid still lay in a tangle of vines near the stream. Nearby, on a large rock in the middle of the stream, was something nearly as unexpected as an antique coffin: a bluegrass trio.

Members of Uncle Baltimore were practicing for a small concert they are planning to perform in the stream on Friday evening. Sam Guthridge plucked a banjo, Alex Lacquement balanced a bass on the rock and Luke Chohany strummed a guitar.

The Baltimore Banner thanks its sponsors. Become one.

The trio, who all live in Hampden, had heard about the coffin, but had not realized most of it had disappeared earlier in the day. As dragonflies flitted in the thick heat, they practiced an appropriate tune, “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin.”

Then Guthridge improvised a song about Lorenz. “Her name was Mathilda. We don’t know what killed her. Was she even real at all?”

julie.scharper@thebaltimorebanner.com

Read more:

Julie Scharper is an enterprise reporter for The Baltimore Banner. Her work ranges from investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and abuse to light-hearted features. Baltimore Magazine awarded Scharper a Best in Baltimore in 2023 for her series exposing a toxic work culture within the Maryland Park Service.

More From The Banner