Catherine Winters is the little girl who disappeared March 20, 1913, and became a Henry County legend. National newspaper chains sent reporters to New Castle to cover the mystery. No one claimed to know what happened to her.

The daughter of wealthy New Castle dentist William Asa Winters, Catherine’s disappearance was largely blamed on an alleged gypsy abduction. Recent research by the late author Charlene Zornes Perry details a more sinister murder theory concerning Catherine’s fate. Perry’s research was published in September, 2013, in the book “Haunted Henry County IV, Looking for Catherine: Memoirs of a House That Spoke.”

When Catherine disappeared in 1913, the New Castle rail line that led to Muncie called Honey Bee was under construction. Some investigators speculated at the time that those who did away with her could have hidden her decomposing body until an opportunity came along for them to secrete it while no one was looking into the big pyramid.

Fast forward a century. New Castle’s Public Works Director Dave Barker said nary a bone was located when the last remaining chunk of cement that had once supported the interurban line was destroyed in July to make way for the city’s new multi-million dollar storm sewer project.

Clearly visible from the Wilbur Wright bike trail at the Garner Street pedestrian crossing, the pyramid was reduced to rubble and hauled away about the second week of July, exactly 101 years after it was built, Mayor Greg York said. The pyramid’s location next to Bowery Brook north of the intersection of Ninth Street and New York Avenue landed it squarely in development’s path.

But a century ago, the angular cement piling was was at the epicenter of the maelstrom of the Catherine Winters mystery that throttled New Castle citizens. Where did Catherine Winters go?