After Decades of Quiet Visits to Boy's Grave, Mystery Mourner Identified

He's been leaving flowers, but someone else has been leaving poems
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 17, 2017 5:44 PM CST

Twelve-year-old Karl Smith drowned on a Scouting trip in 1947. For decades now, people have been leaving flowers and poems on his grave near Cheltenham, England, and his sister, Ann Kear, has longed to know who the mystery visitors are. One of them has now been revealed as part of a BBC Stories investigation: Ronald Seymour-Westborough, 84, who was one of Karl's closest friends in the Scouts—he shared a tent with Karl on his last night alive, and was the one who found him in the sea, face-down.

Seymour-Westborough is the one who has been leaving flowers at the grave; he says he didn't realize Karl even had a sister. The person who has been leaving the poems has yet to be found, but Kear, who was 7 when her brother died, hopes he or she will come forward. The BBC has put its video investigation on YouTube. (More mystery stories.)

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