MISSOURI TOWN DISFIGURED, MARRED BY FREAK NEGRO EXPERIMENT

[Picture below is of a portrait shot of a young girl with an expression of distress. Her neck is covered in heavy scar tissue and eight scars can be seen around her mouth, starting at the corners. Caption below says ‘Little Josie Campbell, bearing the Mad Cutter’s handiwork.‘]

Henshaw, Missouri was left traumatized after a winter feast turned into a cavalcade of horrors. The townsfolk were forced to witness a girl be dismembered and reassembled before being knocked into a state of half-consciousness, vaguely able to understand that their bodies were being modified, pierced through and pumped like bellows. The townsfolk have all been awakened, but some are still suffering from night horrors, memory loss, phantom sounds, and exhaustion. The worst cases are being transported to St. Louis for necessary medical treatment, while the others are treated by other nearby medical practitioners, some travelling over 40 miles to assist. At this time, no doctor has been able to understand exactly what was done to them, with one St. Louis doctor claiming ‘it sounds like something out of one of those Gothic novels from Britain’.

The prime suspect is Victor Freestone, a medical practitioner in Henshaw up until the incident, and the town’s first free Negro. Despite a clean record of operation during his six months of residency, multiple townsfolk report having suspicions of him from the beginning, with one middle-aged woman claiming ‘that Mad Cutter was in league with the Devil from the first day’. Townsfolk also put him in the middle of the circus scandal reported earlier this year from Henshaw, though his actions during the attack are now coming under new scrutiny. Records before Henshaw place him with the Francois Foundation and their charity work in Louisiana, at one point using the name ‘Victoria’ under a female persona; federal authorities are currently investigating potential links between the Mad Cutter and potential associates under Tyce Francois.

The Mad Cutter has fled the town, his office and home abandoned. He is believed to be travelling south, back to Louisiana. He is not known to be armed. A 4,000 dollar reward is out for his live capture; authorities believe he may be able to fix what was done to the townsfolk under duress. Also missing are the town’s reverend, Lamentations Bean; the daughter of town mayor and Union hero Roger Macy, Geraldine; and Marshal agent monitoring the town after the attack by the St. Louis Vaudeville Circus, Matilda Walstead. Marshal 24 of the New Marshal Initiative is personally offering cash rewards for any useful information the missing persons.