A Fatal Resemblance

"St. Louis Post Dispatch," July 13, 1897, via Newspapers.com

In early June 1897, a 19 year old man named Elliot Duckworth left his home in Springfield, Missouri for a visit to St. Louis, and promptly disappeared.  Duckworth was known as a reliable sort with no bad habits, which made his sudden vanishing all the more peculiar.

On June 14, a man was sitting quietly in a St. Louis park, when he was--by his hand or that of another--shot in the head.  A gun was found with him, so it was assumed that he had tried to kill himself.  When the gravely wounded man was brought to the hospital, a card found in his pocket read, "I am Edward L. Doling of Terre Haute, Ind., in case of accident." 

Word of the shooting reached the ears of some bank officials in Terre Haute.  Doling was a cashier in their bank, and had recently disappeared, along with about $30,000 dollars he had embezzled from them.  They were naturally anxious to have a word with him.  Representatives of the bank visited the hospital, and identified the patient as their thieving employee.  The search for Doling was abandoned.

The victim was mostly unconscious and unable to speak for about a month, and it was thought he could not possibly survive.  To everyone's amazement, however, he maintained a tenacious hold on life.  When the patient was finally able to communicate, he insisted that he was not Doling, but Elliot Duckworth.  All he knew was that he had gone to St. Louis to "see a man."  He had no memory of who this man was, or why he wanted to see him.  He recalled going to the park, and that he was sitting there alone, reading, when he suddenly felt a dreadful pain in his right eye,and lost consciousness.  When he awoke, he found himself in the hospital, where--for reasons he couldn't even imagine--everyone addressed him as Doling, a name completely unfamiliar to him.

Duckworth himself had no answers for what had happened.  The injured man begged doctors to save him with such desperation that they were forced to believe his vehement claims that he had not attempted suicide.  He swore someone tried to kill him, but he could not say who or why.

It was a baffling case.  Was Duckworth/Doling telling the truth, or was his wound causing him to hallucinate?  If he was not Edward Doling, what was he doing with that man's card?  And where was the real Doling?  In short, what was going on here?

Duckworth's family was contacted, and they were able to identify the young man as their missing relative.  Tragically, Duckworth's injury left him permanently sightless, and he was transferred to an institution for the blind in Kansas City, where he died of complications from his gunshot wound in November 1898.  This puzzling case was now a murder mystery.

Investigators were able to trace Duckworth's movements prior to the shooting.  When he arrived in St. Louis, he registered at the Planter’s Hotel.  He asked the desk clerk if an Edward Doling had asked for him.  He received a negative answer.  A few hours later, he strolled out of the hotel and asked passerby for directions to the nearest park.  He wished to find relief from the oppressiveness of the day, he explained.  Having received the guidance he sought, he boarded a streetcar.

The next anyone heard was the news that a well-dressed young man had committed suicide in the park.  Police found Duckworth slumped on a bench, a revolver at his feet.

It was not until after Elliot Duckworth's death that the mystery of his shooting began to be pieced together.  Two months before Duckworth left Hutchinson for the last time, he visited a brother in Terre Haute.  Although he and Doling had never been introduced, Doling evidently saw the young man during his visit, and noted the curious fact that they bore a remarkable resemblance to each other.

This caused Doling to form a truly diabolical plan.  He knew that his embezzlement would inevitably be discovered.  Here was his chance, he thought, to fake his own death, and make a clean getaway.

When Duckworth returned home, Doling wrote him a letter.  It stated that Doling was in a position to offer a talented young man a good job in St. Louis, and a mutual friend had recommended Duckworth for the post.  Doling asked Duckworth to meet him at the Planter's Hotel on the afternoon of the 14th so they could discuss the matter.  One of Duckworth's sisters said that the day before he left for St. Louis, this letter was handed to him by a stranger--Doling himself, she assumed, or an agent he had hired.  The stranger also gave Duckworth money to buy a ticket to St. Louis.  He also asked Duckworth if the young man had a revolver.  When he received an affirmative reply, this man bought the gun from him.  This was the very same weapon that had been found near Duckworth after he had been shot.

All became clear.  Doling had lured Duckworth to St. Louis, found a favorable opportunity to shoot him, left the gun at his victim's feet to make it look like a case of suicide, slipped his own card in his victim's pocket, and fled, assuming that he would be identified as the corpse, leaving him free to make a new life with his ill-gotten gains.  If his victim had died without regaining consciousness, he would have been buried as “Edward L. Doling,” and the mystery of Elliot Duckworth’s disappearance would never have been solved.

An effort was made to find Edward Doling but, of course, he had a generous head start.  I never found anything to suggest that the cold-blooded, if ingenious, assassin was ever seen again.