Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles Page #4

anything to do with this

and I don't know

what you're talking about.

He can't travel because he has

a lung condition.

Your son,

with his lung condition,

like, he never travels or

anything, so...

Yeah, huh.

Yeah, because that

would really put him

out of the picture for

being the person

because whoever's done it

has at least traveled,

you know, up and down

the east coast

of the United States.

All right, thanks for your time.

Okay, goodbye.

When I heard the name

Railroad Joe

associated with that address

and that he worked for

Conrail Railroad,

I went and found a Conrail map.

Not only did Conrail pass

through every city

that had a tile

in North America,

but... the tiles stretch

exactly as far as Conrail's

routes travel.

No further west

and no further south,

with the exception

of South America.

However, we found an article

about a telescope.

It was, at the time,

in the early 1970s

when it was made--

the largest telescope ever made.

And bits of it

were being shipped,

one-by-one, to Chile,

South America.

They were

going through the rail yard

that Railroad Joe worked at

at the time.

The article

mentions him by name.

I went to the library

and did some research

on his family name.

The only reference I found

in the early '80s

Philly directories

were tombstone carving.

Railroad Joe's family

is carving tombstones.

It's not a whole huge leap

to get from

carving tombstones

to carving tiles.

Railroad Joe...

really fit my mental image

of the tiler.

Working on the rail road

as a profession

is someone who is

gonna fit this profile.

Traveling, traveling

late at night.

Just that sort of lonely,

"moving through empty space"

sort of person.

I imagine the tiler to

have a lot of those qualities.

And Railroad Joe...

fit that.

So many things line up:

the map, the profession,

the address,

the tombstone-carving

business in the family.

All of these things were coming

together on this one suspect.

The fatal flaw of

the "Railroad Joe as tiler"

theory is that...

he died.

You need to find a way for him

to be tiling beyond the grave.

Short of resurrecting himself,

it's difficult to

make that argument.

So James Morasco called up

Clark DeLeon in 1983

and was interviewed

espousing the same ideas

that the tiles have.

Clearly this is

a leading suspect.

It's the only real tangible

piece of evidence.

I contacted

Clark DeLeon via e-mail

and I started to kinda get him

talking about

anything that he

remembered about this caller,

that the caller might have said

in addition to

the basic message that

he wrote about in the article.

"I think that Morasco said he

lived in Fishtown or Kensington,

"which are working-class, mostly

white neighborhoods

"that run along

the Delaware River

"north of Center City.

"He sounded blue collar,

proud of his education,

"certain of his information,

"but not confident of his

presentation to me

"or, rather,

to the 'inquirer.'

"He had a soft bass voice

"which was definitely

Philadelphia working class.

And that's about it,

my friend."

Yeah, this is sort of pointing

to a different area of the city.

It's giving a little bit

of a profile

of Morasco as a person.

But that's about

all we know about him.

There's not a whole lot more

information

aside from that about

James Morasco as a person.

Based on trips to

the library and looking at

old, early '80s--

telephone directories,

the only James Morasco that

existed was not in Fishtown,

not in Kensington,

not in South Philadelphia,

but in the northwest

of the city,

in a very

not working-class neighborhood

called Chestnut Hill.

He's been interviewed by

reporters.

"Cincinnati City Beat" ran an

article in, I think, in 2001.

The person who answers

the phone says,

"Well, Mr. Morasco can't speak

because he's had his

voice box removed."

His wife spoke for him and said

he had nothing

to do with the tiles.

Based on his age,

when the tiles would have been

put down across the country,

he would have been

in his 70s and even 80s.

It doesn't fit, obviously.

We're looking for

a social worker

named James Morasco.

We've never found a social

worker named James Morasco.

The more we looked

into James Morasco,

the less likely it seemed that

he even existed.

There's still this

lingering question,

"Who's James Morasco?"

The cutting of the cake!

Whoo!

Justin's exhibit will be up

for the next month,

so please come over

and take in the art.

When he came into 7th grade,

he was a really talented artist.

He had the same art teacher from

and she loved him.

I remember being in 9th grade

and I had an art class

and she had all of

his art laid out.

She brought everybody from

our class over and was like,

"Look how good this kid is,

he's gonna be great,"

and she was like, "You should

really be proud of him."

It just seemed like

she just always had one kid

that was, like, her favorite.

And she put all their artwork

in these art competitions

and you'd win

these gold keys.

Where I think things

all went-

took a turn for the worse was,

she really...

wanted him

to just kind of conform

to this thing that she

thought was going to

win him these awards

in this competition.

He didn't take instruction well

and he didn't do

what he was told.

That naturally put him at odds

with the art teacher.

He was on

a controversial mind trip.

It was a slap in the face to her

that somebody that she

championed as being talented

could not be exactly the person

that she wanted them to be.

It was a love affair

gone sour, you know?

So there was just

a conflict about that

and then the conflict

just escalated

and got worse and worse.

My day-to-day life in school

was pretty much a war.

I would walk through the hallway

and kids would open up a locker

and smash me into it

and, you know,

push me down the stairs.

And then they'd be like,

"F***ing pigeon man."

He received a lot of abuse.

It was personal,

you know?

They were anti-Justin

and he was anti-them.

He definitely has

always been an outsider.

It really

got to a fever pitch.

I would skip classes

and I would just go back behind

the auditorium

where there was

a area back there

that was dark and lonely

and gloomy

and I would just

draw pictures, you know?

Once he got kicked out

of art class,

I think in

the beginning of 11th grade,

his high school days

were numbered.

Justin was out of step

with the world

from the very beginning

to what he is now.

He's a strange bird.

Think he's gonna

carry that right on out.

Let's see this.

Bill O'Neill eventually

lost interest

in the whole

phenomenon and decides,

"I'm just going to hand it over

to you guys.

"I'm passing the torch.

"It seems like you guys are

keeping up

"on investigating

the mystery and everything.

So here you go."

And he hands over

the access codes

and everything to

Toynbee.net for us.

There we go.

Aw, sh*t,

here it is, man.

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