Author

After seeing so much wretched debris, Bob Schoelkopf found it jarring to encounter a corpse that looked beautiful. It had washed ashore alive at Lewes, Delaware, just before noon, and expired as someone tried to move it. This death raised the body count to thirty, in six weeks.

The corpse arrived in Cape May at 5:00 on July 30, 1987, on the flatbed of a pickup truck aboard the ferry from Lewes. Now it lay motionless on a bed of ice, seven feet long and sleek. Like the others, it appeared to be smiling.