The Case of the Disappearing Bride

In August 1934, a beautiful 21-year-old redhead named Olga Schultz married handsome Wyoming oilman Carl Mauger. It had been a true whirlwind courtship, with the wedding taking place only a few weeks after the couple first met.

The newlyweds elected to spend their honeymoon elk hunting. It was a natural setting for Olga--she was a country girl who had spent her life hunting, fishing, and hiking. The wilderness was familiar territory for her. The Maugers pitched their tent at Togwotee Pass, 40 miles west of Dubois. On September 17, six days into their stay, Olga and Carl hiked off into the wilds, seeking a game trail. Olga carried with her a small hatchet and a bag of sandwiches. According to Carl, after they had been hiking for some time, Olga said she was tired. She opted to stop and rest while Carl climbed a ridge to "spot" elk. He estimated he was gone for about twenty minutes. When he returned, Olga had vanished. When Carl's search for her proved fruitless, he returned to camp and summoned help.

Within a couple of days, over 300 people were scouring the area, looking for some sign of Olga. Bloodhounds and trackers from the nearby Indian Agency were enlisted in the search. Not a single trace of the missing woman was ever found. The heavy clothing she was wearing, her hatchet, and the bag of sandwiches were never found, as well.

The cross marks the site where Olga vanished.

Carl Mauger was, inevitably, looked upon with some suspicion by the authorities--in fact, they kept him in jail for two months while they interrogated him repeatedly. But his simple, straightforward story remained consistent throughout, and police finally concluded that there was no evidence that he played any role in his new wife's peculiar disappearance.

However, it did emerge that the newlyweds had a complicated history. Before he met Olga, Carl had been courting a young woman named Ella Tchack for five years. While Ella was eager to marry him, Carl kept putting off setting a wedding date, using the excuse that they should wait until he had steady employment. One night, the pair attended a dance, where Olga happened to catch Carl's eye. And that, as they say, was that. Although Ella agreed to step out of the picture, Olga's sister Edith Thompson later said that after Olga and Carl married, Ella sent them a letter threatening to commit suicide.

Carl Mauger

Even more ominously, Mrs. Thompson also claimed that Olga personified that old adage about "marrying in haste." She stated that her sister regretted her marriage practically from the moment the ring was placed on her finger. She had read Ella's letter, and felt very badly about it. Edith recalled that as she was helping Olga pack for the honeymoon, her sister begged her to come with them.

"Why, Ollie," Edith replied, "three persons never go on a honeymoon." She noted that Olga's expression was terribly sad, "not at all like that of a bride."

Although Olga Mauger's disappearance is still remembered as Wyoming's oldest "cold case," no one to date has found any clues indicating what became of her. All anyone can offer is speculation.

Did Olga suffer a terrible accident in that notoriously rough, mountainous country? Did she fall into some ravine or gulch? Working against that theory is the fact that she vanished in a small area, every inch of which was repeatedly searched. For years after she vanished, hunters in the area kept a sharp lookout for some trace of the missing woman, but nothing was ever found. If she had been murdered or committed suicide, the same question applies: where is the body?

Edith Thompson was convinced that Olga disappeared voluntarily. She believed that her sister, fearing that she had made a terrible mistake by marrying Carl, bolted the camp the minute her husband was out of sight. She made her way to the nearby highway, where she could hitch a ride to virtually anywhere. Edith pointed out that Olga had $30 in cash when she vanished, and she was a skilled stenographer, which would have been enough to enable her to start anew. However, if Olga had run away, why did she not contact any of her family or friends? And if Edith was correct that Olga felt that Carl should have married Ella, why not simply divorce him?

Seven years after Olga went on that fateful hike in the woods, Carl Mauger obtained a divorce and remarried. His new wife was none other than the remarkably patient Ella Tchack. Out of deference to the feelings of Olga's family, he did not seek to have his first wife legally declared dead.

Edith Thompson professed to be delighted by Carl's remarriage, saying that it was what Olga would have wanted. She still believed her sister was alive somewhere. "I continue to haunt the mail box, expecting to hear from her someday."

Unfortunately, no one has ever heard from Olga Mauger again.

Newspaper Clipping(s) of the Day

A few weeks back, I described the odd disappearance and death of a small child named Stephen McKerron. As I said in my post, I felt the case had many features similar to those missing persons cases covered in David Paulides' "Missing 411" books. These newspaper stories from Wales chronicle another tragedy involving a missing boy that I believe falls into the same eerie, inexplicable pattern. As far as I can tell, it is not covered in any of Paulides' books.

The "Evening Express," August 10, 1900:

The visit of William Jones, of 9 James-street, Hardy, Pontypridd, to the town of Brecon was accompanied by a tragedy which threatens to embitter the lives of himself and his wife. 

On Saturday evening Jones walked from Brecon to one military camp at the foot of the Beacons. He was accompanied by his son, a bright little fellow five years of age, named Thomas. With his blue eyes and bright brown hair Tommy looked the picture of roguish activity as he trotted by his father's side, dressed in a greyish suit, with jockey cap and collarette. 

At the camp little Tom and his father met Tom's grandfather, who resides in the neighbourhood, and a cousin aged thirteen years, named W. J. Jones. The two boys were soon engaged in youthful pastimes, and the younger lad agreed to accompany his cousin to a place called Cwmllwch. Away they started, but after, it is said, crossing two bridges, and when they were half-way to the house, little Tom changed his mind. He would go no farther. He wanted his father. The boys separated. The boy of thirteen went on alone to the house. The little boy of five mysteriously disappeared, and up to a late hour on Thursday night no trace of him had been found. 

After the elder lad had visited the house, he returned to the spot where he had left his younger comrade. Finding he was gone, the cousin hurried to the camp, and gave the alarm. A military search party was kindly and promptly ordered out by Major Lloyd. 

The troops in camp were quickly on the alert. They carried lights, and used every device known to old campaigners to discover the lost lad. Until the midnight hour the eager soldiers explored every spot that could suggest itself, and the first faint light of dawn found them agarn searching for some trace of the lost lad. Every day, and almost every hour since the search has been continued, but the mystery is so deep that it would seem to need either the skill of a Baden-Powell or the genius of a Sherlock Holmes to ascertain whether there has been any foul play. The part of the Beacons where the lad disappeared abounds with gullies, over which undergrowths of trees and shrubs have grown thickly, and a body might be concealed for months if no unpleasant sign became apparent. The father is well-nigh distracted and a fresh element of pathos has been added to the tragedy by the arrival of the sorrow-stricken mother. The mysterious occurrence forms the leading topic of conversation at the Beacons, in the barracks, and throughout the neighbourhood of Brecon.

"Evening Express," August 29, 1900:

The interest in the boy lost three weeks ago on the Breconshire Beacons had dwindled down almost to vanishing point, but a new impetus has been given to the boy-hunt. On Tuesday night a special correspondent of the Daily Mail arrived in Brecon, with instructions to engage again in the search. He renewed the offer of £20 for anyone finding the boy alive or dead. 

The theory that the poor little lad had wandered away and failed to return to the camp alone is no longer to be acted upon. The advice of detectives whose opinions have been secured has led those engaged in the search to believe that the child has been deliberately kidnapped. In pursuance of this theory the search will be conducted over a far wider area than before, and the hunt will be conducted so thoroughly and systematically that it is hoped the interest of the public will be secured in the quest. This will result in placing thousands of amateur but earnest detectives on the lookout for strangers who have a child, apparently, not their own, bearing a suspicious resemblance to little Tommy Jones, of Mardy. 

There are two facts which have an important bearing on the kidnapping theory. The father recently stated in one of his final interviews with a pressman that his little boy had suffered from an injury to his leg or foot. As a result of this he would not run, but could walk fast. In any case, therefore, a five-year-old boy could not have had in twenty minutes a mile start of the soldiers who were searching for him. A second fact is that the father pointed out the print of his child's foot on the ground about 50 yards from the bridges over the brooks. He said that was the only print he could see of his child's foot. There were no other footprints before or beyond that spot. This fact might suggest that the child was carried by a person who placed him on the ground, so as to gain a minute's rest. To the despairing father and mother the kidnapping idea will be a ray of hope. It must be some comfort to know that men who have given their lives to criminal investigation believe in tie possibility of the little wanderer being yet restored to his loved ones. May that hope be justified by experience!

Sadly, as in the case of Stephen McKerron, those hopes were eventually dashed.  From the "County Observer," September 8, 1900:

The Brecon mystery has at last been solved. The body of the lost child Tommy Jones was found high up on the Beacons on Sunday afternoon by Mr. Abraham Hamer, a gardener, of Castle Madoc, Lower Chapel. Mrs. Hamer read the accounts of the missing boy on Friday of last week, and felt that she could not rest without making some effort to find him; she dreamed of Tommy Jones by night and thought of him all day. 

So on Sunday morning she and her husband drove 10 miles to the bottom of the Beacons and climbed the steep sides, nearly 3000 ft. above the sea level. Hundreds of people have searched the same ground during the past month, and only three days ago the father of the boy walked within 20 yards of it. As they walked, at two o'clock they suddenly lightened on a little stretched out figure in front of them.   

"Here he is," the man shouted, and his wife began to cry. Leaving Mrs. Hamer near by, the man quickly drove into Brecon, and soon Sergeant Hand, Constable Harwood, and a representative of the Daily Mail were on the spot. 

It was a pathetic little figure that lay on the mountain top face downwards, hands stretched out, and head towards home. The pocket was turned out as though the last crumb had been taken from it, and the soles of the boots showed that he had walked far. 

Evidently on the Saturday night when he was lost the boy made for the left in place of the camp to the right. Then he went down the hill and round, steadily leftwards. Going some way towards  Merthyr he would gradually get on the Mountain Ash road. Probably he recognised the peak of the Beacons and made for it. Had he walked a dozen steps further he would have seen the glen lying below with the home of his aunts. But from where he stood he could see nothing all around but the desolate hills. Not a house was in sight in all the miles of country. To the back, line upon line of black mountain ash stretched out; a few hundred yards to his right stood the grim peak of the Beacons; in front was nothing but sky. And so he fell, his hands clenched and his arms above his head. 

A crowd quickly gathered, even in that solitary spot. The father tore up the mountain side, rushing along the almost perpendicular heights as though they had been level ground. "Tommy back, Tommy back my poor little lad," he murmured. Then for the first time in all these weeks he broke down, and tears saved his reason. One man fainted at the sight. 

The condition of the ground clearly showed that the body had lain on that mountain side for a very long time. The child's hat lay within two feet of where he lay. 

On Saturday a large detachment of the Breconshire Regiment, under the command of Captain C. Wadsworth, marched up to the Shire Hall early in the morning, and from there set out for the River Tarell. When the soldiers came to parts of the riverside so steep that they could not be properly examined from the banks, Captain Wadsworth, followed by his men, plunged up to the middle in the swift current and waded through the water. This had to be done repeatedly. At the same time the police and a number of civilians helpers were hunting in the direction of Mynydd Illtyd. Spreading out they first thoroughly explored an enormous wood a little over two miles from where the child was lost. When they had penetrated the wood the searchers turned to a stretch of bracken-covered mountainside many miles in extent. The hunters formed a line about half a mile in extent, and marched forward beating the land as though for game. They came to bogs where, the old mountain guides said, men sank completely so soon as they floundered in them. These bogs were probed, but yielded nothing. They walked warily around old slate quarries where a chance wanderer could easily fall and be killed everywhere were death-trap spots where a straying child must have been killed. The body has been missing since August 4--a month all but a day.

The spot where the body was discovered was over two miles from where Tommy had last been seen, and some 1300 feet higher.  No one could explain how this little boy--who was suffering from a leg injury, no less--had traveled such a long distance over difficult mountain terrain.  Another oddity is that Tommy was wearing a whistle around his neck when he vanished.  (It was still on his body.)  Why didn't he use it to summon help?

As in the case of Stephen McKerron, the coroner's inquest ruled that Tommy died of "exhaustion and exposure." The little boy's sad, strange death lingered in the collective memory of his community for many years.

Money was raised to build a memorial to Tommy Jones on the site where he was found. It still stands there today.

A Case For David Paulides

Wonderwest World in the 1960s, when it was known as Butlin's Ayr

Anyone who has a serious interest in Forteana and/or missing persons cases is probably familiar with the "Missing 411" series written by David Paulides. His books are a compilation of disappearances--largely in national parks--with particularly strange elements to them. The victim vanishes suddenly and very inexplicably. Usually, no trace of them is ever found again. Sometimes, however, the victim is later found dead--often either in areas that had already been carefully searched, or in an inaccessible spot far away from where the person was last seen. The bodies are often found nude, or at least missing their shoes and socks. The cause of death is either "exposure," or impossible to determine. In the rare cases when the person is found alive, they are unable to clearly say what had happened to them. Paulides' books are possibly the most unsettling things I have ever read.

As far as I know, Paulides has not covered the following disappearance, but it fits in the same eerie pattern.

September 17, 1988 was set to be one of the happiest days in the brief life of Stephen McKerron. The five-year-old from Hamilton, Scotland was on a week's holiday in Ayr at the home of his aunt and uncle, Lyn and Ian Sneddon. He was eagerly anticipating his visit to Ayr's Wonderwest World holiday park, a seaside amusement center featuring rides, games, entertainment, and all the other features guaranteed to thrill the heart of any lively little child.

For some three hours, Stephen had the time of his life at the crowded, merry park. And then, suddenly, the unthinkable happened. While the boy was playing on an escalator, the Sneddons--each thinking that the other was watching him--briefly lost sight of Stephen. Although he was only out of their view for a matter of seconds, it was time enough for him to vanish completely. The increasingly frantic Sneddons quickly searched the park, but found no trace of the child. They then went to the park's security team, who in their turn called police.

The hunt for Stephen McKerron was the largest missing-child search in Scotland's history. A six-mile radius around the park was searched by hundreds of officers and volunteers. His description was widely circulated. Divers searched local rivers and water tanks. A special helicopter was brought in that had "heat-seeking" equipment that could detect a body. It all did no good. Stephen appeared to have vanished into dust.

The publicity brought in several alleged "sightings" of the boy. One person claimed to have seen a "distressed" looking Stephen in a Wonderwest World cafe several hours after he went missing. He was in the company of a middle-aged man. Another park visitor said he saw a boy matching Stephen's description climbing Wonderwest World's seven-foot-high fence. A number of motorists believed they had seen Stephen walking alone along the Ayr-Turnberry road about a half-hour after the Sneddons last saw him. Whether those reports were credible or not, they were of little help in finding the child. After a few days had passed, the police admitted that they were "desperate" for leads. The assumption was that Stephen had been kidnapped--he was a happy child with no motive to run away--but that didn't square with the eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him wandering alone. In any case, where was he?

Stephen's loved ones were left tormented by horrible suspense until over two weeks after he vanished, when their worst fears were realized. On the afternoon of October 2, a woman was walking her dog in open country near her home at Beoch, over six miles from the holiday park. She was stunned to come across the dead body of a little boy. He was lying in a fenced ditch about half-a-mile away from two farmhouses. When police arrived on the scene, they quickly confirmed that Stephen McKerron had finally been found. He was lying just outside of the search area. It was ruled that the child had died of exposure. There was no sign that anyone had harmed him in any way.

Authorities believed that Stephen had walked to the site alone--six miles over some of the most difficult and unappealing countryside in Scotland, full of marshes, hills, gullies, and thick woods. A local described it as "hellish territory." It would have been hard for a strong adult to walk so far through such an area. For a five-year-old, it seemed virtually impossible.

The police came in for a good deal of criticism for not making their search area a wider one.  A department spokesman retorted with "How far do you go?" Law enforcement pointed out that their search area had been based on previous experience, as well as professional estimates on how far the boy could possibly have traveled on foot. What happened to Stephen was, quite simply, beyond anything anyone could have imagined.

The puzzle of Stephen's disappearance and death was, of course, far from solved. His distraught family insisted that he would not, could not, have walked to this remote site on his own. They believed that someone must have abducted the child and then left him in that ditch to die. His father also highlighted the odd fact that when Stephen's body was found, his socks had been removed and were in his pocket. Mr. McKerron pointed out that his son did not know how to tie his shoes. Not only would it have made little sense for Stephen to take off his shoes, remove his socks, and then put his shoes back on, he could not have done it at all. (Of course, it makes no sense that anyone else would do it, either.) The question at the heart of the tragedy--namely, why Stephen would voluntarily leave the park at all--was also impossible to answer.

An official inquiry was held in March 1989 before the local sheriff, Neil Gow. After considering the various theories involving foul play--that someone had kidnapped Stephen and left him in this remote spot to fare for himself, or killed him and then dumped his body in the ditch--Gow ruled that the boy had simply died a strange, but completely natural death. Stephen's "enterprise and stamina" had been "seriously under-estimated by all concerned." The sheriff concluded that, for whatever unknowable reason, the boy had wandered away from the park and continued to hike until he collapsed and died. As far as the authorities were concerned, the case was closed.

"Case closed," however, does not necessarily mean, "Mystery solved."