A Double Disappearance

When one person inexplicably disappears, it’s weird.  When two people vanish, presumably together, things get stranger still.  When two people and a boat all go missing, never to be seen again…

In the late 1960s, an Irish couple named Kieran and Ornaith Murphy emigrated to California.  They settled in the Bay Area, where they soon did very nicely for themselves.  The couple made a small fortune investing in increasingly prestigious real estate.  As landlords, they were considered “tough, but fair.”  Kieran, a brilliant mathematician,  also worked as an actuary for San Francisco’s retirement system.  Ornaith, meanwhile, became a skilled long-distance sailor, often voyaging alone.  In 1998, she became the first woman to sail alone from San Francisco to Cape Horn.  Arthritis and a serious car accident left Ornaith unable to walk without difficulty, causing her to cherish all the more the freedom and mobility she was able to find on the water.  “I just want to go as far as I can and as far as my legs will let me,” she wrote.  “I don’t want to triumph.  I don’t want to conquer.  I’m just very happy being at sea.”  The Murphys were both witty and intellectually-inclined, fond of reading and discussing literature.  The couple had two sons.  The family was seen as hard-working, talented, and friendly.

Unfortunately, the beginning of the 21st century was not nearly as kind to the couple as had been the end of the 20th.  They hit a rocky patch, both personally and professionally.  Ornaith was deeply distraught to discover that her husband was having an affair, and the couple separated.  A divorce was planned.  They also began facing problems with their real estate holdings.  In 1999, there had been a fire at an apartment building they owned which left a child badly burned, and the Murphys were facing a costly lawsuit over the incident.

These were grave problems, to be sure, but no worse than those successfully weathered by other couples.  For the Murphys, however, things would soon take a far darker turn.  On December 15, 2002, the estranged pair planned to meet to discuss their various legal issues.  Ornaith was seen doing work on her 39-foot sloop, the Sola III, as it was docked at Oakland’s Jack London Marina.  A friend stopped by that afternoon.  Ornaith mentioned that she was planning to go for a sail with a friend that evening.  (However, she did not file a sail plan for this trip, which would be highly unusual for this experienced and meticulous sailor.)

That night, people nearby saw a man onboard who matched Kieran’s description.  (If this was indeed Kieran, it would be unusual for him to be on the sloop--he did not know how to sail and hated being on the water.)  A short time later, witnesses heard a disturbance coming from the direction of the Sola III, a loud bang that may--or may not--have been a gunshot.  At 8:36 p.m., the Sola III sailed out of the marina.  It had about a week’s worth of food onboard, but it was not otherwise outfitted for a long journey.

Early the next morning, Ornaith phoned a niece whom she had been living with, saying she was in Berkeley.  She declined an invitation to breakfast.  She also left several voicemails for one of her sons, saying she was at the Berkeley Marina, on her boat.  She sounded quite calm and normal.  But that day, the Sola III vanished.  So did the Murphys.  No one has seen either Kieran or Ornaith--or the boat--since.

"San Francisco Examiner," December 28, 2001, via Newspapers.com

The complete paucity of clues in this triple disappearance has led to any number of wildly-varying theories.  Did Ornaith lure her husband on board her boat, only to shoot him, deliberately sink both the boat and the body somewhere, and disappear to start a new life?  Or was it Kieran who was the murderer?  Was it murder/suicide?  Did the beleaguered couple agree to reconcile and escape their problems together?  

Or was a third party responsible for their disappearance?  Everyone who knew Ornaith insisted that she had no thoughts of ending her life, and was utterly incapable of plotting her own disappearance.  And Kieran was too unskilled a sailor to take the boat for even a short journey.

At least some investigators believed this was a grim case of murder followed by suicide (they declined to state publicly who they believed to be the killer.)  However, to date, not a scrap of evidence about the final fate of the couple has been found, leaving this as a particularly eerie mystery.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this Friday's Link Dump!

Our hosts for this week are some Caledonian visitors.

Bad company in 1950s Los Angeles.

The life and work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The failed attempt to get Canada to fight for the colonies in the American Revolution.

Early newspaper reporting about the Loch Ness Monster.

The origins of England's common law rule.

Napoleon's traveling bookcase.

Legends of the Emily Morgan Hotel.

Yet another case of a young girl being blamed for poltergeist manifestations.

The tragedy of Zeppelin L-19.

So, let's talk cursed souvenirs.

Chimpanzees make pretty good doctors.

The art of the Catholic counter-reformation.

The scent of ancient sculptures.

Extraordinary treasures found in ordinary places.

So, literary parties can get weird.

Why ancient reptile footprints are giving scientists migraines.

A Roman aqueduct full of cats.

The man who rebuilt the UK Parliament.

A brief history of demons.

Why you can't go on the world's longest train journey.

The days when the worst part of widowhood was ordering the mourning dresses.

The mysterious murder of San Francisco socialites.

The many lives of a container ship.

A family triple murder.

The world of intraterrestrials.

Bessie Coleman, pioneering aviator.

The man who sold his wife for 20 shillings.  And a dog.

We're all glowing.

HMS Achates and the "worst journey in the world."

A tribute to "Hoosier cabinets."

Folklore's "otherworldly brides."

When Calvinists criminalized singing.

Some particularly cold cases.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a couple's unsolved disappearance.  In the meantime, I read the other day that the former lead singer for The Spinners died.  They were one of those groups that made listening to the radio in the '70s fun.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

An unusual prowler was reported in the “London Daily Mirror,” February 13, 1974:

A one-legged barefoot ghost seemed to keep a step ahead of the police who answered a burglar alarm call yesterday. 

For when they answered the call at the home of Mr. Kenneth Broadhead in Ashill, near Thetford, Norfolk--they found the house supernaturally secure, with nothing stolen. 

And the only clue nearly made their hair stand on end. 

That was a single spooky row of footprints--all made by the same foot--which had hopped across the floor of a room and stopped against a solid brick wall.

Then the ghost apparently de-materialised through a door and set off the burglar alarm. 

A senior police officer said: “Apparently it is the ghost of a one-legged Jesuit priest, and it is known at the house. 

“But why set off a burglar alarm when you can just melt through a door?”

Why, indeed?

The Enigmatic Death of a Diplomat

On June 14, 1904, Kent Loomis, the brother of Assistant Secretary of State Francis R. Loomis, sailed from New York aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  His mission was to travel to Addis Ababa in order to deliver an important trade treaty between the United States and the Ethiopian King Menelik.  This treaty had, for some time, been a matter of intense interest among the European powers.  His traveling companion was a wealthy, flamboyant entrepreneur named William H. Ellis.  Ellis was a frequent visitor to Ethiopia, and had campaigned to be given this mission himself, but the State Department declined to entrust him with the task.  This was a bitter disappointment for Ellis.  He had hoped to use delivery of the treaty as a signal to King Menelik that Ellis had the backing of the American government in his various ambitious business ventures in Ethiopia.  There are even suggestions that he hoped Menelik would appoint him as heir to his throne.

Loomis never made it to his destination.  Sometime on June 20th, he vanished from the ship.  There was conflicting evidence for what had happened to him.  Soon after he disappeared, the Kaiser Wilhelm made a stop at Plymouth, England.  One passenger swore later that he saw a dazed-looking Loomis go ashore at that time.  The captain and head steward, however, were equally positive that Loomis could not have disembarked.  Ellis claimed that Loomis had been drinking heavily during the voyage, and had an unfortunate habit of sitting precariously on the ship’s railings.  (This was not corroborated by any of the other passengers.)  Ellis expressed his opinion that his cabin-mate, while in a state of intoxication, had accidentally fallen overboard.  A further oddity was when it was noted that the tags on Loomis’ luggage had all been altered.  They showed the initial “E” instead of “L,” and the first name had been erased.  In Loomis’ mysterious absence, Ellis was given possession of the treaty, enabling him to complete the diplomatic mission after all.

Loomis’ whereabouts remained a complete mystery until a month later, when his body was found washed up on a beach fifteen miles from Plymouth, with an ugly wound on the back of his skull.  An autopsy found that this blow on the head had killed Loomis before he entered the water, but they were uncertain whether this injury came from an attack, or from striking his head on some part of the ship’s ironwork when he fell overboard.

The mystery of Loomis’ death has remained unsolved.  Ellis died in 1923 in Mexico City.  His obituary in Time magazine called him “one of the most remarkable men who ever acted as agent for the State Department.”

One certainly cannot argue that.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

It's all in the family!

What the hell was the Deerness Mermaid?

Why clams are happy.

The mystery of the Pied Piper.

A cursed family.

The strange story of an occult historian.

Another reminder of how little we really know about our own planet.

Abbott Parker was struck by lightning.  And then things got really weird.

The skull rock on Mars.

What linguists think are the most beautiful English-language words.

VE Day celebrations in London.

Timbuktu librarians versus Al-Qaeda.  (P.S. The librarians won.)

The journalist who broke the story of Germany's surrender in WWII--and then got fired for it.

Whale urine turns out to be pretty darn important.

Space keeps exploding, and scientists are up a tree.

The days of Britain's Bright Young Things.

A strange kidnapping in 1921 Los Angeles.

A Victorian deathbed scene that's very...Victorian.

A Renaissance muse.

The dogs of the Moscow Metro.

Some people are suggesting that the Antikythera mechanism isn't all that impressive.  Spoilsports.

The origins of the phrase, "put your foot in your mouth."

The golden tombs of ancient Bulgaria.

The man who wanted to be sent to Auschwitz.

The Labyrinth of Hawara.

The latest Pompeii excavations.

When going to a state fair can be fatal.

So, you're an Ice Age traveler about to cross the Pyrenees.  Here's what to pack.

The lost London Skylon.

VE Day in British newspapers.

A mysteriously tragic honeymoon.

A look at how Mongols governed.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at the strange death of a diplomatic envoy.  In the meantime, here's an all-star version of an old favorite of mine.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Little mix-ups--particularly between strangers--are always embarrassing.  The “Galveston Daily News,” July 24, 1892:

SAN ANTONIO-About a month ago a stranger, apparently 35 years of age, came to this city from Mexico, it is said. He took quarters at the Globe Hotel and remained there for ten days. One night he appeared at the Vienna Hotel on South Alamo Street with a valise and took a room. The people at the place thought he was intoxicated and paid no attention to his groans at midnight.  The next morning he was found dead. He had in his possession some shirts and papers bearing the name of C.G. Jones, also a letter addressed to Charles Finehout. His body was held here pending instructions from relatives. As a result the body of the man was sent to Seymour, Ind., and the following special from that place shows the sensational turn of affairs that developed a little later. The dispatch says:

“On July 1 there came to Western Union telegraph office here a telegram from San Antonio, Tex, signed A. R. Buchanan, addressed to Mr. Joe I. Moore saying:

“Young man found dead in bed at Vienna Hotel here this morning. Among his effects a recent letter from you addressed to Charles Finehout. Other letters and wearing apparel marked C.G. Jones. Wire information.

“The attaches of the telegraph office were twenty-four hours in tracing the ownership of this message to Mrs. Josephine Isaacs Moore, wife of one of our prominent manufacturers and daughter of C.C. Isaacs, a retired farmer. Mr. Isaacs at once replied to the message as follows:

“Think corpse my nephew, Charles Finehout. Can it be shipped here?” 

“He also telegraphed Mr. Francis Schuh, formerly of this city but now of San Antonio, to ascertain if the corpse at the Vienna Hotel was that of Charles Finehout.

“Charles Finehout is or was a man of about 28 years of age, tall, strong, and well built, who spent nearly all of his early life here, but who for the past six years had been in the southwest holding positions on different railroads as fireman and engineer. When home on a visit a year ago he admitted that he traveled under an assumed name, Frank Melville, the greater part of the time. When last heard from six weeks ago, he was at Santa Rosalia, Mexico, where he said he was an engineer on the Mexican Central Railroad and that he was in good health, had saved up $500 and intended to make a visit home shortly, but not until after he had gone to the City of Mexico to join the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

“In due course answers to Mr. Isaacs’ telegraph were received, the one from Schuh saying, ‘Corpse at Vienna is that of Charles Finehout.’ And from Buchanan, “Body can be shipped, but not in presentable condition.’ 

Isaacs went immediately to the First National Bank and had them telegraph Buchanan to ship the remains here and guaranteeing the charges. On July 6 the box was received here with advanced and express charges of $187. This was paid and the remains taken to the home of Mr. Isaacs on North Walnut Street. There the box was opened and the coffin exposed to view. It was of the very cheapest kind, probably costing about $20.

“It was opened and it was found that it was not lined and that the remains were packed in sawdust. The face was uncovered and although decomposition was well advanced, some of the friends who were present declared that the remains were not those of Charles Finehout. However, there was nothing done, and the coffin was closed and religious ceremonies held, and the remains were interred in a new lot, just purchased by Mr. Isaacs in River View Cemetery.

“After the funeral ceremonies were concluded an examination was made of the contents of the valise. Aside from the Joe I. Moore letter and one or two photographs there was nothing in the valise to indicate that it was the property of Charles Finehout. Other articles in the valise were shirts marked C.G. Jones, letters and documents addressed to the same name. Among the latter was a certificate from the general office of the Mexican Central Railroad to the effect that C.G. Jones was traveling auditor for that company. This of course, served to arouse the suspicions of the relatives that they had buried the remains of some other than Charles Finehout, and they immediately sought to get word to him at Santa Rosalia, where last heard from. No answers came, however, to their telegrams, and they concluded that they had made no mistake and that Charles Finehout was dead and buried. They decided to trace Jones, and sent a number of letters, detailing the circumstances, addressed to the correspondents of Jones, as found in the valise.

“On yesterday their suspicions that Finehout was not dead were confirmed when by the receipt of a letter from him dated Las Vegas, N.M., July 1, and postmarked July 4, saying he was well and hearty. Telegrams since exchanged are conclusive evidence that he is alive and well, and will be in Seymour within a few days.

“But who is the man sleeping his last sleep up there in the beautiful $200 lot in River View? Who is C.G. Jones? Where is he? Is he dead; or was the man a thief who stole from both Finehout and Jones? Who is to reimburse Isaacs in the expense incident to the burial of the unknown, nearly $400? Since Finehout’s last visit here his grandfather had died, leaving him property valued at $10,000.”

Apparently none of those pertinent questions were ever answered. As a side note, I'd also like to know why Finehout was in the habit of traveling under an assumed name.

Death of a Lighthouse Keeper: The Strange Case of Ulman Owens

A lonely, isolated lighthouse.  A raging nighttime thunderstorm.  The lighthouse keeper suffers a violent, mysterious death…

If Ulman Owens isn’t perfect Strange Company material, I don’t know who is.

Since 1911, Owens had been the keeper of the Holland Bar lighthouse, off the Maryland coast.  The 53-year-old widower normally performed his duties with efficiency, so when on the night of March 11, 1931, the lighthouse suddenly went dark--and during a hurricane, at that--the nearby community of Crisfield was naturally alarmed.  As soon as the storm was over, the local Sheriff and a few other law enforcement officers went to the lighthouse to investigate.  They assumed something had gone very wrong, but possibly the little group still wasn’t prepared for what they found.

Owens’ dead body was lying at the top of the circular staircase leading to the lighthouse cubbyhole.  He was wearing only a shirt, and his body was covered in bruises.  The rest of his clothing was in a bloody heap nearby.  A deep gash was on his side, and a large welt was on his forehead.  The lighthouse itself bore witness to what must have been a long and extremely violent struggle.  Furniture was overturned, a chair was smashed to bits, and there were splotches of blood everywhere.  A blood-stained knife was found on top of the stove.

All of this naturally led to the initial assumption that Owens was the victim of an unusually brutal murder.  However, a further search of the lighthouse cast some doubt upon this theory.  Three now-empty bottles of spirits of ammonia were found in the dead man’s bed, causing police to wonder if the lighthouse keeper, driven to madness by his isolated existence, poisoned himself with the ammonia and then tore apart his quarters during his death agonies.

Holland Bar Lighthouse, circa 1950

The coroner, after a casual examination of the corpse, concluded that Owens had died of a heart attack, and the following day the body was buried in a nearby churchyard.  Nothing to see here, move along.

Local residents felt otherwise.  The prevailing opinion was that Owens had been murdered, and people became increasingly noisy about saying so.  Such talk was further amplified when details about Owens’ surprisingly colorful private life began emerging.  It turned out that Owens had been romantically involved with one Minnie Shores.  Minnie was married and the mother of three, but she had been planning to get a divorce and marry her lover.  However, Mrs. Shores may have been unaware that she was far from the only woman in Owens’ life.  As unlikely as it may seem, our supposedly reclusive lightkeeper was quite the ladies’ man, surrounded by an army of infatuated women.  According to the gossips, at least one of them was so jealous of Owens’ relationship with Minnie Shores that she was overheard making threats against his life.  The question was asked:  Did one of his many lady friends get a bloody revenge against Owens?  Or was he murdered by a resentful husband?  (Before you ask, the most obvious suspect, Minnie Shores’ estranged husband, had an unassailable alibi.)

The possible motives for why anyone would want to murder Owens began to grow quite impressively.  His job as a lighthouse sentinel made him the natural enemy of the rum-runners who had to ply their trade literally under his nose.  Furthermore, it was said that Owens had reported a number of these smugglers to Federal agents.  Did one of these lawbreakers decide to shut Owens’ mouth…permanently?

Owens’ two adult daughters were adamant that someone had murdered their father, and insisted that the authorities reopen their investigation into the case.  They pointed out that Owens had never suffered from heart trouble, and the extent of his injuries was so great, it would have been impossible for him to inflict them all on himself.  Enough of a ruckus was raised for two agents from the Department of Justice to involve themselves in the mystery.  Owens’ body was exhumed and a complete autopsy was finally performed.  It showed that he had suffered a head wound brutal enough to crack his skull.  Despite the presence of the bloody knife, Owens had no stab wounds.  No poison was found in his organs, but he had an enlarged heart, which allowed local authorities to stick by their curious assertion that the lightkeeper had died a perfectly natural and unsuspicious death.  All the blood found around the lighthouse?  It was obvious: Owens must have had a nosebleed!

The two Federal agents were less convinced of this.  They nosed around for a while, but wound up shrugging their shoulders and going back to Washington in defeat.  And the Ulman Owens case was--however unsatisfactorily--closed for good.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this Friday's Link Dump!  The name of this week's host is, unfortunately, lost to history, but I love that look of Cattitude.

The Outer Hebrides are really humming!

The importance of a fingerprint from Stonehenge.

Earth's inner core may not be...the inner core.

Isn't it good to know that scientists are hosting wine tasting parties for rats?

The discovery of an ancient city associated with Alexander the Great.

An anecdote of the workhouse.

Tourists find buried treasure in the Czech Republic.   Beats a souvenir t-shirt.

British newspaper headlines from VE Day.

Detective work in 19th century France.

The hero of St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.

Stories created by children during wartime.

HMS Wasp, accidental victim.

A historic Moroccan necropolis.

Newspaper coverage of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

The 1813 Battle of York.

A famed rum-runner.

In which historians ponder all the most important questions.

Pope Francis goes into eternity with really lousy kerning.

The fake Hitler diaries.

A high-status 4,500 year old burial.

The medieval period has lousy PR, and some historians aren't happy about that.

The Napoleon diamond necklace.

The first advice column.

E.T. might turn out to be Ted Bundy.  

A brief history of the word "hillbilly."

The 1911 Champagne Riots.

A British MP who was also an Arctic explorer.

An Irish "close encounter."

The myths of Elisabeth of Austria.

A tour of Shakespeare's London.

The pyramids and hydraulic engineering.

The oldest known domestic cats in what is now the United States.

A glimpse of peasant life in ancient Egypt.

The Fisk assassination.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a mysterious death inside a lighthouse.  In the meantime, bring on the blues.

 

 I thought a version of this song done by Linda Ronstadt some years ago makes an interesting contrast.