At about 11 p.m. on Thursday, October 6, 1949, a call came in to the Diamond Taxi office asking for a cab to take two passengers from Beaverbrook Avenue to Millidgeville. The caller told the receptionist, Gladys Johansen, to "send Pop". Police later learned that the call probably came from a phone booth in nearby Portland Place. A woman there saw a man making a call from the booth at about 11 p.m. while another man waited outside. William "Pop" Puddington, 72, had driven taxis in St. John for 35 years. Johansen relayed the call to him at the Merchant Navy Officer's Club. At about 11:15 Mr. Puddington was on his way to Portland Place. Shortly before midnight a motorist driving home found his way blocked by a taxi parked in the middle of the Somerset Road Extension. He called the police who found Mr. Puddington's hat in the back seat. A search immediately began for Mr. Puddington. It was Mr. Puddington's son Edwin, himself a taxi driver, who found the body about an hour after the discovery of the taxi. Setting out along his father's probable route to Millidgeville he decided on a hunch to explore the Boar's Head side road first. As he followed the narrow, winding, track through the bush his headlights picked up the body lying partly in, partly out of the left ditch. Mr. Puddington had been bludgeoned to death with his own bumper jack which was found in brush about twelve feet from the body. A pool of blood stained the road about a foot from the edge and more blood covered the rocks and mud in the bottom of the ditch. Mr. Puddington's keys were gone along with the $26 he was believed to be carrying. The murder scene was only two miles from the phone booth from which the call was thought to have been made.

William Puddington. (Source: St. John Evening Times-Globe, October 7, 1949, p. 1.) Mr. Puddingon was survived by his wife and son and two brothers. Police checked the car, bumper jack and phone booth for fingerprints. The police file contains notes on the investigation but no indication that any arrests were made.