The Man Without a Past: The Curious Mystery of Charles Jamison

"New York Daily News," November 25, 1956, via Newspapers.com

There are a number of tragic cases where people lose all memory of who they are, and, for whatever reason, no one is able to help them recover their identities. However, few such stories are as complicated and uncanny as the long, long search for the real “Charles Jamison.”

One day in February 1945, an ambulance arrived at the emergency entrance of Boston’s U.S. Public Health Service Hospital. Inside was an unconscious, middle-aged man whose condition was so obviously grave that the nurse on duty dispensed with the usual formalities and had him immediately admitted. She asked the ambulance driver for the man’s name.

“Charles Jamison,” he replied. The man would not or could not say anything more about the patient. Then he disappeared, along with the ambulance, never to be heard from again.

For some time, it was uncertain that “Jamison” would survive. He suffered from an acute stage of osteomyelitis (an infection of the bone marrow.) He had hideous sores all over his body, and his back was badly scarred with what doctors guessed were shrapnel wounds. After weeks of treatment, his life was finally out of danger. However, the infection left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down, and his speech was so impaired that anything he said was almost unintelligible. On top of all this, Jamison was suffering from complete amnesia. He was unable to say who he was, or what had happened to him.

At first, authorities assumed they could trace his identity. Surely, there had to be some record somewhere of this terribly ravaged man. But the more they tried to investigate the patient’s past, the more mysterious he became. The shabby clothes he had worn contained no identification of any sort, and they even lacked labels or laundry marks. No one ever called the hospital to ask about him. Inquiries to every ambulance service in and around Boston revealed that none of them had dispatched an ambulance to the Public Health Service Hospital on the day Jamison had been admitted.

Jamison was around sixty years old, with graying hair and brown eyes. He was six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds. There was a two-inch scar on his right cheek, the index finger of his left hand was missing, and both arms were covered with tattoos. His appearance was so distinctive that it was thought it might help identify him, but that failed to be the case.

The tattoos were a mixture of flags and hearts. Some of the flags were American, others British. One faded tattoo had a scroll that seemed to say “U.S. Navy.” This led to the assumption that Jamison had been a sailor in the naval and/or merchant service, a belief bolstered by the fact that he had been brought to the only hospital in Boston that specifically treated seamen. There was a theory that Jamison had been aboard a freighter that had been shelled and torpedoed by a German submarine, but that could never be verified. However, after being sent Jamison’s fingerprints, both the FBI and the military replied that they had no record of him, which would not have been the case had he served in either the Navy or the merchant marine. His photo was sent to missing persons bureaus across the country, but that proved to be just as futile as every other effort to identify him.

For years, the poor man spent long days sitting in his wheelchair in a blank silence. He rarely made any sounds, and seemed to take little notice of the world around him. Then, in 1953, the hospital’s newly-installed medical director, Oliver C. Williams, became intrigued by this most enigmatic of patients. He felt there had to be some way to learn who this man really was.

Dr. Williams decided the only way to learn Jamison’s identity was by finding a way to communicate with the man himself. He devised a simple word game, where Jamison would be given a phrase or simple question, and asked what, if anything, it meant to him.

When asked how old he was, Jamison stubbornly insisted that he was 49, although it was clear that he was far older. “How old is your wife?” made his eyes briefly light up, but after struggling to think for a moment, he sighed and said, “I don’t know.” He knew who Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone were, although he spoke of them as though they were still living British statesmen, not historical figures dead for many decades.

This communication method elicited information in a very slow and difficult manner, but Dr. Williams managed to learn enough to convince him that Jamison was an Englishman who had served in the British Navy. At one point, while looking at pictures of various parts of England, Jamison suddenly remarked “I’m from London!” Unfortunately, all he could add to that was the statement that he lived in “a gray house.”

Jamison said he had no living relatives, and that he had gone to sea at the age of 13. He recalled that he had attended the gunnery school at Osborne in 1891 or 1892. When he was shown an issue of “Jayne’s Fighting Ships,” he recognized the British battleship Bellerophon. It was commissioned in 1909, and took part in World War I. “I served on her when she was new,” he commented with evident pride. When asked what ships he had served on during the Great War, he was reluctant to reply. He said, “They were all in convoy, under secret orders. They had no names, only numbers, and if I knew them I couldn’t tell you.” Even when it was pointed out to him that the war was long over, he refused to give any more information on his wartime duties.

The little information Jamison provided about his career was sent to British naval authorities. However, they found no record that anyone named “Charles Jamison” had attended the gunnery school, or served in their navy. The British were equally unable to find any record of his fingerprints. More dead ends.

At this point, Jamison was able to provide one more clue. He told Dr. Williams that one of the tattoos on his arms was the British ensign crossed over a U.S. shield, with the motto “United.” The other was of an English clipper he had sailed on called the “Cutty Sark.” When contacted about the ship, London authorities confirmed that there had indeed been a clipper by that name...but it had been retired almost fifty years earlier, and no other ship had carried that name since.

The "Cutty Sark"

Then, the Jamison mystery took an even weirder turn. The name “Charles William Jamison” was found on the manifest of a U.S. Navy troop transport ship which had docked in Boston on February 9, 1945. This was just two days before Jamison had arrived at the hospital.

The manifest’s information about Jamison was all handwritten in ink--an inexplicable detail in an otherwise typewritten document. It claimed that he had been repatriated after spending four years in a German POW camp. He was picked up by the transport ship on January 24, in Southampton, England. His age was given as 49, and his birthplace was Boston.

The manifest also said that he had been a sailor on a ship which had been torpedoed. The name of the ship was “Cutty Sark.” Which had not been on the seas for five decades.

Records showed that no Charles William Jamison had been born in Boston between 1885 and 1905. No one by that name had been made a naturalized citizen. No one connected with the transport ship had ever heard of anyone by the name of “Charles William Jamison,” and they could not say who had made the handwritten notations about him.

Jamison was quickly becoming the spookiest amnesiac on record.

Authorities in Invercargill, New Zealand cabled the hospital that Jamison’s description sounded identical to that of a crew member of the freighter “Hinemoa” named James Jennings. As it happened, Jamison had mentioned the ship a few times. He remembered that at one time, he had been a mate on the Hinemoa. It had carried nitrates from Chile to England until it was sunk by the Germans. However, the name “James Jennings” rang no bells with him. Research proved that Jamison’s information about the Hinemoa was correct, but the freighter’s crew lists did not have Jamison’s name, or anyone matching his description.

It was discovered that a Charles William Jamison had been born in Illinois in 1908. His name appeared in the Coast Guard’s file of merchant mariners, but no further information could be found about him. When asked about this man, Jamison replied with only a blank stare.

In 1956, a segment dealing with the Jamison riddle aired on national TV. A viewer in Texas thought Jamison resembled his father-in-law, Frank J. Higgins. Higgins had been a chief engineer in the merchant service before he disappeared many years back.

As seemed to happen at every turn in the case, this fresh lead just led to more mystery. Higgins, who was born at approximately the same time as Jamison, was a New Yorker who spent his adult life as a sailor. On December 9, 1941, his ship, a freighter named the “Frances Salman,” docked in Galveston, Texas. It was in port for less than a week before it sailed for Portland, Maine with a load of sulphur. On January 12, 1942, Higgins’ wife Rosalie received a letter from him. He was at St. John’s, Newfoundland, about to sail to Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

Higgins and his freighter were never seen again. The Frances Salman failed to arrive at Corner Brook, and its fate is unknown to this day. In the words of the ship’s owners, “She simply disappeared from the face of the earth.” Although we’ll likely never know what became of Frank Higgins, we can at least rule out the possibility that he was “Charles Jamison.” Their fingerprints didn’t match.

Thus ended the search for the true identity of Charles William Jamison. He died in the same hospital in January of 1975, still unable to say who he was, where he came from, or how he wound up at PHS. He was, in the words of a fellow patient, “the living unknown soldier.”

Jamison playing checkers in 1973. "Dayton Daily News," January 21, 1975, via Newspapers.com

The Man Who Wasn't Murdered: The Strange Case of James Eugene Harrison

"New York Daily News," September 20, 1959, via Newspapers.com

Q: What do you get when you mix auto theft, disappearances, amnesia, murder, and far too many tattoos?

A: One of the crazier true crime cases I’ve encountered.

At the center of our weird little saga is James Eugene Harrison of Indian River City, Florida. He was the owner of a successful window sash plant, happily married, a father of two young children. A perfect example of a solid middle-class citizen.

On October 7, 1958, the 32-year-old drove to Cocoa Beach, about fifteen miles away, to conduct some routine business. And promptly disappeared. When he failed to return home that night, his wife Jeanne immediately knew something was very wrong, and she phoned police. However, their investigation found no trace of Harrison.

No clues emerged regarding Harrison’s disappearance until a week later, when police in Jacksonville, about 150 miles from Indian River, found his abandoned station wagon. It had been sitting there since the morning after Harrison had last been seen. Ominously, the front seat was saturated with blood. “Somebody was murdered in that car,” a Jacksonville officer concluded. When the blood was found to match Harrison’s Type O, the natural conclusion was that the “Somebody” was the missing man. It was presumed that Harrison had been unlucky enough to pick up a hitchhiker who robbed and murdered him, then buried him in some obscure place and ditched the car. However, the only fingerprints found in the car were Harrison’s.

Poor Jeanne Harrison was naturally distraught, and at a loss what to do next. As she had no idea how to run her husband’s business, she felt she had no choice but to liquidate everything, and she and her children went to live with James’ mother in Miami. To support her children, she took a job as a receptionist while waiting in an agonizing limbo, not knowing if her husband was alive or dead.

On January 18, 1959, Mrs. Harrison finally received news about James. Unfortunately, it was the worst news imaginable. A Californian named Roy Victor Olson, who had just been convicted of the murder of television announcer Ogden Miles, confessed to killing James Harrison, as well. According to Olson, before stabbing Miles he had murdered a Seattle man named John Weiler. After the Miles murder, Olson fled to Florida, where he fell in with a young Kentuckian, James Leach. The pair spent several days hitchhiking together.

Olson went on to say that on October 7, 1958, he and Leach were walking along Highway 90, between Lake City and Jacksonville, when they were picked up by a man in a station wagon. He seemed like someone who would have money on him, so when the driver stopped to stretch his legs for a few moments, the pair attacked him.

“I stabbed him while Leach stood by with a rock in his hand,” Olson told his interrogators. “We robbed him of $500. We took a shovel we found in his car, dug a grave, and put him in with his business cards. We filled it in, then drove up to Jacksonville and left the car. His name was Harrison.” Olson did not know Leach’s current whereabouts but said he shouldn’t be hard to find. “He’s just about the most tattooed fellow in the country.”

Under further questioning, Olson added more details. He and Leach covered their victim’s body with two bags of “something” they found in the car--”I think it was lime.” He described minutely the wooded area south of Jacksonville where they buried Harrison. Olson concluded with, “Well, that’s that. I wonder how many more I’ve killed?” He was, in the words of Jacksonville officer Roy Sands, “the coolest killer I’ve seen in 17 years of police work.”

Everything the police found corroborated Olson’s horrifying story. Harrison had bought two bags of fertilizer just before he disappeared. He did indeed carry a shovel in the car identical to the one described by Olson. Two fertilizer bags were found in the area where Olson said the body was buried. To wrap up this murder case, all that was needed was to find the body...and, of course, James Leach.

"New York Daily News," September 20, 1959

The FBI issued a warrant for the tattooed Kentuckian. Florida Governor Leroy Collins sent extradition papers to California to bring Olson back to the state. On January 23, Leach was apprehended in Knoxville, Tennessee, and his captors quickly noted that Olson had not been exaggerating about his cohort’s body art. Leach had “The Kentucky Kid” tattooed on his right leg. “Six months I lived and lost,” was on his right arm. His chest sported a panther and the word “Crime.” His left shoulder read, “Born to raise Hell.” The left arm was adorned with “Born to lose,” and “Death.” His left leg featured a skull wearing a top hat.

Give Mr. Leach the prize for "Suspect least likely to be overlooked in the identification parade."

The 21-year-old Leach--who had never been found guilty of anything beyond vagrancy--protested his innocence. He admitted that he had spent a few days hitchhiking with Olson, but he had no idea the man was a murderer, and he himself certainly had no role in killing anyone. “I have no idea why he implicated me in something neither of us did,” he declared.

Given what the police had uncovered, it was small wonder no one believed him.

It was then that this seemingly straightforward murder took a bizarre twist. In Phoenix, Arizona, on the same day Leach was arrested, a well-dressed, freshly-shaved man stopped a car backing out of a residential driveway, and asked the driver to take him to the police station. This driver, understandably wary of this odd request, declined, but agreed to telephone the police to come and get the man.

The Arizona man did contact police, informing them that either a robber or a lunatic was standing in his driveway. When officers arrived, they found a man, seemingly in a great state of confusion, muttering, “How did I get here? How did I get here?”

At the station house, he informed them that he was James Eugene Harrison of Indian River City, Florida. He was stunned to find that it was January 1959, not October 1958, and had no idea at all how he came to be in Arizona.

According to Harrison, “yesterday--at least I thought it was yesterday” he was driving to Cocoa Beach. When he stopped at a traffic light, a man with a gun forced his way into the back seat. This man said, “I want to go to Jacksonville. Take me there and you won’t get hurt.” When they arrived in Jacksonville, the gunman ordered him to pull into a parking lot. After that, he said, “The lights went out.” He explained that “I woke up just a little while ago...I was lying on a parkway beside a street. My clothes were dirty and this T-shirt wasn’t mine...I never wear them. My $300 was gone. So was my watch and my Masonic ring. I found I was still wearing my wedding ring and I had 67 cents in my pocket. I started walking...I thought I was in Jacksonville…”

The police, eyeing the man’s dapper appearance, felt a bit skeptical of his story. They warned Jeanne Harrison that this Phoenix oddball was almost certainly a fraud. However, as soon as she spoke to the man on the telephone, she began screaming in joy. “It’s Jim! It’s Jim!” she cried. Still unable to believe the man’s story, investigators showed her a wire photo of the mystery man. “It’s Jim!” Jeanne insisted. “I don’t care what happened as long as he’s alive.” The ecstatic woman wired her husband the money to fly home. “It will be like starting our life all over again,” she said.

"Knoxville Journal," September 25, 1959, via Newspapers.com

Law enforcement saw their nice, tidy murder case suddenly turn into an inexplicable muddle. Somebody had left all that blood in Harrison’s car, and, judging by the quantity of it that was found, that somebody just had to be dead. But who was this person? Did Harrison kill his carjacker? Or did his assailant attack Harrison and steal his wallet and papers, only to be murdered by Olson?

As for Olson, he now repudiated his confession, claiming that he only admitted to killing Harrison in order to get “a free trip to Florida.”

As the erstwhile murder victim enjoyed the reunion with his family, authorities began compiling a long list of questions for Harrison. His whole story struck them as, in a word, fishy. They noted that Harrison bore no signs of any injuries, old or new. Police also found it odd that he had a reddish streak in his hair that appeared to be dyed. However, his family insisted that the red spot was natural, and Harrison himself maintained that he had no memory of what had happened to him.

Harrison’s return from the dead forced police to drop the murder charges against Leach. However, they continued to investigate his confession, along with the riddle of Harrison’s disappearance. During the three months when everyone assumed he had been murdered, where was the Window Sash King, and what had he been doing? No one could say. Although his photograph was published in newspapers across the country, no one came forward claiming to have seen Harrison during the period when he was missing. When asked to take a lie detector test, Harrison declined, stating that “I’ve been pushed around enough.” He and his family went into seclusion, refusing to say any more to anyone about the whole ordeal.

On February 4, a Phoenix woman who had seen one of the published photos of Harrison contacted police. She claimed that he had been her seatmate on a bus trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix. This witness said that she had chatted with him, and he seemed perfectly rational, showing no sign of distress or confusion. The man carried no luggage with him, and left the bus in Phoenix on January 23, just a few hours before Harrison went to the police.

Frustratingly enough, there the matter rested. As far as I have been able to tell, the main questions surrounding this mystery were never resolved. Police never learned how or why Harrison vanished, or where he was for those three missing months. If--as authorities continued to suspect--Harrison knew more than he was saying, the Floridian kept his secrets to himself. The identity of the person who left all that blood in his car was fated to remain equally mysterious.

Police were able to validate at least one part of Olson’s confession: he had indeed murdered a Seattle restaurateur named John Weiler. (It was said that “perverted sex acts” figured in the stabbings of both Weiler and Ogden Miles.) He was sent to Washington state long enough to be tried and convicted, after which he was transferred to California’s Folsom Prison. In the 1970s, he was paroled, only to begin serving his 75-year sentence for the Weiler murder in Washington. In the mid-1990s, Olson--who had a religious conversion in prison and claimed to be a reformed character--was released on parole. He seems to have lived a law-abiding life until his death in 2001.

In 1960, the skeleton of a man was found near the Jacksonville Expressway, in the general area where Olson claimed to have buried his victim. It was speculated that this man--who was never identified--was the victim stabbed to death in Harrison’s car, but that, of course, was impossible to prove.

All in all, this story is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when you’re missing most of the pieces.

Rickety Dan and Crazy Jack: A Problem of Identity

via Newspapers.com

Like all conflicts, the chaos of the American Civil War left a number of unsolved mysteries in its wake. Few, however, were as peculiar as one confusing case of unknown identity. Today, DNA testing would have quickly resolved the issue, but at the time, it was fated to remain an unanswerable question.

William Newby, the man at the center of the puzzle, was born in Tennessee around 1825, but his family moved to Illinois when he was a small child. Newby's life was totally unremarkable until 1861, when he enlisted in the Union Army.

The secondary star of our show was an unfortunate Tennessean named Daniel Benton. Soon after his birth in 1845, he developed rickets. The disease so affected his legs that he was unable to walk without wobbling, which earned him the nickname of "Rickety Dan." As an adult, he was unable to hold down a normal job. He became a vagrant, traveling from town to town until he was sent to prison for stealing horses, where he remained until he managed to escape custody.

In 1862, Newby was shot in the head at the battle of Shiloh. Although he survived the initial injury, he was obviously gravely, even possibly mortally wounded. His comrades were forced to leave him on the field. Two days later, burial details arrived on the scene. There were conflicting reports about whether or not Newby's body was found and buried, but in any case he was listed as having been killed in action. Nothing more was heard from him until 1891, when memories of Newby were revived in the most startling fashion: a man turned up in his old Illinois hometown, claiming to be none other than the "long-dead" soldier. According to Newby--or was it "Newby?"--after Shiloh, he was captured by the enemy and sent to the infamous Andersonville prison, where he remained for the rest of the war. At Andersonville, he endured terrible privations and witnessed even more horrific sufferings, such as when a fellow captive amputated his own gangrened legs. Newby's head wound caused such a severe loss of memory that he did not even know his own name. At Andersonville, he was known only as "Crazy Jack."

After the war ended, the amnesiac, broken in both body and mind, spent years wandering aimlessly through the South. He eventually wound up in Illinois, where he was recognized by Newby's brother. This relation brought him back to his old home, where Newby's surviving family members--including Newby's mother, wife, sister, and children--instantly accepted him as William.

A happy ending? On this blog? Oh, come now. In 1893, the newly-resurrected Newby ran into trouble when he applied for his army pension, as well as back pay--a sum which, all those years later, amounted to some $20,000 (around $500,000 in 2018 dollars.) The federal government declined his petition, on the grounds that he was not "William Newby" at all! Rather, the feds asserted that he was Daniel "Rickety Dan" Benton. Newby/Benton found himself facing charges of attempted fraud.

The key issue at his trial, of course, was the question of the defendant's identity. This proved to be harder to establish than either side bargained for. Two former Union soldiers testified that after Shiloh, they had given Newby's body a battlefield burial. On the other hand, several other veterans swore that Newby was Andersonville's "Crazy Jack." Other witnesses stated that when Newby was roaming through Tennessee, he was often mistaken for Daniel Benton. On one occasion, he was even arrested as Benton and taken to the prison from which Rickety Dan had escaped. Newby--or whoever he was--remained in custody until 1889. He told the court that after his release, he made his way to a poorhouse in Mount Vernon, Illinois. He made the acquaintance of William Newby's brother, who immediately recognized the amnesiac as his long-lost sibling. Talking to the brother about their shared past helped William to regain old memories of his true identity.

In the end, thirty witnesses claimed that the defendant was Daniel Benton. However, one hundred and forty people swore that he was William Newby. In addition, doctors testified that the man on trial had never had rickets. Unfortunately for "Newby," this seemingly compelling evidence in his favor failed to impress the jury. After deliberating for only 20 minutes, they ruled that this American Tichborne was "Daniel Benton," and found him guilty of attempting to defraud the government. He was sentenced to two years in prison.

"St. Louis Post-Dispatch," July 23, 1893 via Newspapers.com

Virtually everyone agreed that this was a highly unsatisfactory resolution to the riddle. As the "Otago Daily Times" sighed, "There is a strong possibility that he is Daniel Benton; there is a possibility equally as strong that he is William Newby."

The claimant made an unsuccessful request for a new trial. After he served his sentence, Newby/Benton returned to his vagrant ways, a man without either a home or an official identity. He died in Alabama in 1905, and was buried in the local potter's field.

Modern researchers generally believe that the claimant was indeed William Newby, the victim of a blatant miscarriage of justice. Illinois historian Paul Stallings, who studied this strange case for many years, believes the government's pension board, reluctant to pay out such a huge sum of back pay and veterans' benefits, chose to deliberately railroad an innocent man by means of bribed witnesses, a biased judge, and a rigged jury.

Was Stallings correct? Unfortunately, there is no way we will ever know for sure.

Who Was Mary Doefour?

I commented on an earlier post that as eerie as unsolved disappearances may be, it is equally disturbing when a person--whether alive or dead--is found, with no clue as to their identity. They are each unwelcome reminders that we all stand on shakier ground than we would like to think.

Today's post, sadly, features examples of both these sort of cases.

In November 1926, Anna Myrle Sizer, a pretty 28-year-old elementary school teacher from Mt. Vernon, Iowa, got off a train in nearby Marion. She had been in poor health for some time, and was on her way to visit her doctor. Her family and friends never saw her again. Although there was a long and intensive search for her--Sizer's family even hired detectives who pursued possible leads for years--no clue to her fate could be found. She had simply vanished. No one believed she had disappeared voluntarily. Sizer was an intelligent, hard-working, responsible woman of "very high character," with no motive whatsoever to leave her life. In the words of her father, "She was not the kind of girl to take a sudden notion to go someplace." A few days after Anna disappeared, a policeman saw a woman matching her description walking aimlessly along Highway 30, between Cedar Rapids and Chicago. Unfortunately, he had not at that time heard of the Sizer disappearance, so he did not detain her. Sizer's family finally came to the conclusion that some psychotic stranger had murdered her and successfully hidden the body. Although they never really stopped looking for Anna--and certainly never forgot her--her loved ones eventually went on with their lives. Anna Sizer's story, however unresolved it may have been, was seen as permanently closed.

In March 1978, an elderly woman died of a heart attack in her bed at the Queenwood East Nursing Home in Morton, Illinois. She was called "Mary Doefour," but the only thing anyone could say for sure about her was that this was not her birth name. Over fifty years earlier, the then-attractive young woman had been found wandering dazedly along U.S. 30, just outside of Chicago. She had been beaten and raped. The traumatized woman was suffering from amnesia, so was unable to say who she was or where she lived. She could only say vaguely that she thought she was a schoolteacher.

The mystery woman received scant press coverage, and no one came forward to identify her. The authorities felt they had no choice but to place her in the Manteno State Hospital. She, literally, became "just another Doe." Chillingly, there were so many woman patients whose identities were unknown that they were all given the name "Mary Doe," with a number added to differentiate them. This proved to be the start of many long, nightmarish years for the woman in various state institutions. Although she was clearly not insane--and some nurses believed that if she had ever been given proper therapy, her memory would have returned--"Mary Doefour" was condemned to a bleak life imprisonment for the crime of being a victim. As a result of the rape, she gave birth to a child, who was immediately placed in an orphanage. She was terrified of men, although after she went blind late in life, that fear subsided. She was given electro-shock therapy and kept in a drugged stupor, thus ensuring that her mind and memory remained a permanent blank. She became one of the living dead, scarcely able to speak or function normally.

After her passing, "Mary" would have been quickly forgotten if her story hadn't caught the attention of Rick Baker, a reporter for the "Bloomington Pantagraph." He became intrigued by the grim mystery surrounding her, and wrote a story about the woman, hoping this bit of publicity might finally uncover the secret of her identity. It did not.

When Baker was later hired by the "Peoria Journal Star," he persuaded his new editor that the Doefour puzzle was worth pursuing. By this point, it had become a personal obsession with Baker to get to the bottom of this tragic woman's life. Although she was beyond all rescuing, perhaps he could at least give her the dignity of her real name.

Baker's follow-up story on Doefour inspired a reader in Iowa to send him a letter. She said the mystery reminded her of a Mt. Vernon, Iowa schoolteacher who had vanished around 1930. She thought the teacher's name had been "Alice Zaiser."

It wasn't much of a lead, but it was the best Baker had to work with. He made some calls to Mt. Vernon, and was eventually able to contact this missing schoolteacher's brother, Harold. He was able to inform Baker that his long-lost sister's name had been Anna Myrle Sizer. Her family had never heard from her again after she got off a train in the fall of 1926. "My parents died waiting to hear from her."

A mysteriously missing teacher in Iowa and a mysteriously found teacher in Illinois. Both had light brown hair and blue eyes. They were about the same age. Could these two women have been one and the same?

Baker had a personal meeting with Harold Sizer, who was understandably reluctant to believe that his sister spent the last fifty years of her life in asylums. There truly are worse fates than death. Although he told the reporter that he simply refused to accept that Anna could have been "Mary Doefour," he did provide a photograph of his sister.

Baker could only find people who had known the asylum patient in her old age. However, when these eyewitnesses were shown the photo of Anna Sizer, they believed they were looking at a young "Mary Doefour." Both women had similar physical characteristics, including a vaccination scar on the left upper arm. Unfortunately, "Mary" had been cremated, making any more scientific comparisons impossible.

Baker wanted to examine "Mary's" extant medical records, in the hope of finding more clues to her identity. However, they could not be unsealed unless one of her relatives petitioned a judge to force the state to turn them over.

Harold Sizer was presented with all the evidence Baker had collected suggesting that "Mary Doefour" was his missing sister. He was asked if he would give his consent to initiate legal proceedings to have Doefour's records revealed.

Harold refused. He stated that Baker had failed to convince him that "Mary" could possibly be his Anna. He claimed to see no resemblance between the two women. And he did not want Baker, or anyone else, pursuing the issue any longer. This belated investigation was, Sizer said plaintively, "just rubbing salt in the wounds." Although Baker's motives had been good, he realized he was merely forcing Anna's surviving family to relive the most painful episode of their lives, for no really useful purpose. After all, whatever the truth may have been about "Mary," she was long past the need for any human help. Baker was conducting a search that was over fifty years too late.

So that was that. Although Baker remained personally convinced that he had solved this twin riddle, his theory can never be proven.

Anna Sizer and Mary Doefour. May they--or she--rest in peace.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

This sad story is curiously like the subject of my very first post on this blog, the enigmatic "Jerome." It comes from the "Daily True Delta," (New Orleans, LA,) March 10, 1866:

Twelve years ago a family named Sawyer, living in the town of Westbrook [Maine], were surprised to find that a very superior new milch cow, carefully kept in their stables, was "drying up." This continued until Mrs. Sawyer discovered, some time after, the prints of human fingers in the soap grease barrel in the stable. Communicating this discovery to her husband, he procured help from the neighbors and a thorough search of the stable followed. An examination of the hay-mow disclosed a small hole, which, being followed up by pitching away the hay, led to a sort of den-like place in the interior of the mow. Here was found a strange being, a man apparently of about 24 years, half clothed in rags, shockingly filthy, and having no feet. One foot was missing just above the ankle: the other was gone a little higher up, the stump terminating in an oblong way, and in a manner showing that it was not the work of a surgeon nor had it received the attention of a surgeon when lost. His face and head were of average intelligence, but not a word could be got from him. He had lived there a number of weeks, subsisting on the milk of the cow and the grease. He was turned over to the town authorities and placed in the poor-house, where he now is and has been for the past twelve years.

All attempts to solve the mystery concerning this strange being have proved futile. No one has been found yet who ever saw or heard of him, and during the whole twelve years he has never uttered a word. Various expedients have been tried to loose his tongue. On one occasion he was given a bottle containing a pint of whisky. He seemed to understand exactly what it was, for he placed it to his lips and drank the whole at a draught, but it had no perceptible effect upon him. In manner, habits, etc., he is like a wild beast. In the summer he is kept in a sort of a wooden, cage-like structure in the yard. He is very shy of strangers, and will hide his head in his blankets when they approach. His quarters are comfortable, and it is impossible to give him better, for sanitary reasons.

Where the creature came from is certainly a mysterious matter. He could not have walked from a distance, as he crawls upon his knees very slowly. The only theory attempted is this: A few weeks before the man was discovered, the steamer Sarah Sands arrived at this port from Liverpool with a large number of emigrants. It is conjectured that this being might have been a burden to some one over the water. Mr. Sawyer (since deceased) hauled a load home from the steamer's wharf at that time, and it is reasoned that the man might have been clandestinely added to his load, and from thence have crept into his stable.

As was the case with his Nova Scotia counterpart, the man's identity appears to have remained unknown.

Who Was J.C.R.?

In the early 20th century, a strange missing person/amnesia case played out in the American Midwest that reads like “The Return of Martin Guerre” as written by John Webster—body count and all.

One of the first major articles to bring the puzzle to public attention was a story in Chicago’s “Day Book” newspaper on May 9, 1913, telling of a mysterious amnesiac currently in the state hospital in Rochester, Minnesota:

Who is “Aye-hee,” the man of mystery who has spent six vain years groping after his own past?

Who is “Aye-hee,” who thinks with a man’s brain, but has lost the threads of thought that hold a man’s life together and bind him to family and friends?

Here in the state hospital I have spent many hours with this tragic “Man Who Was,” who suffers the fate of Kipling’s famous character--the soldier whose hardship made him forgetful of his name, family and regiment, with only the dim knowledge that he was a British soldier.

“Aye-hee” is a sailor, whose eye brightens at mention of the American navy. He may be an officer. He is erect, dignified, well-mannered. He is not insane. His face is intelligent and his eye clear. But it clouds over as he tries to see into his own past.

He can only utter the strange word that has given him his nick-name, and write only the three letters “J. C. R."

One night in June, 1907, “Aye-hee” was found lying on the platform of the railway station at Waseca, Minn. He had had a stroke of some kind. His head was bruised. When he recovered consciousness his right side was paralyzed from toe to cheek. He could not speak or write. He understood spoken words with difficulty. And he had forgotten who he was and whence he came.

A charitable German family cared for him for a year, and Dr. W. A. Chamberlain attended him. Finally he was taken to the Rochester institution, where he has been since.

He greeted me with a smile, and a shake of his left hand. He was eager for a test. Little by little I felt my way, asking him questions covering recent years, the night at Waseca when his memory went, and the years back of that.

“What were you doing on the train,” I asked. And then, by endless questions, I gathered that he was going west--that he had come from San Francisco to New York and was on his way back. And then came the most surprising thing.

He belonged in the navy!

He had carried official dispatches.

In Kipling's story, "The Man Who Was" is brought back to self-knowledge by the sight of his old regimental quarters, and the familiar battle flags and trophies. I wondered whether this man, too, might not be capable of such an awakening.

“What was your ship?” I asked.

“Aye-hee” he did not know.

“Where have you voyaged? Have you been north?” He turned up his coat collar and shivered.

“Have you been with Peary?”

“Aye-hee, aye-hee!” he nodded eagerly. And after long questioning he declared it had been in 1902 or 1903. Peary was in the Arctic then.

I showed him a picture of Admiral Schley, and he went into ecstasies. He knew Schley! But he did not know whether he had sailed with him.

Dr. Arthur F. Kilbourne, superintendent of the hospital, queried the navy department at Washington, but officials there could tell nothing.

And yet SOMEBODY must know him.

Who, then, is “Aye-hee?” Do YOU know?

Here is his picture and his story, so far as it is clear. If you have any notion who he is, call up and tell The Day Book, and the editor will be glad to co-operate with you in restoring to this man his name and identity.

Facts About “Aye-hee.”
Initials supposed to be "J. C. R."
Probably a non-commissioned-naval officer.
May have been north with Peary.
May have served under Admiral Schley.
About 46 years old.
Height 5 feet 6 inches.
Weight, 146 pounds.
Hair, nearly black, streaked with gray.
Eyes, brown.
Complexion, medium.
One lower front tooth missing.

The publicity “J.C.R.” received brought the patient to the attention of two aunts of a Jay Allen Caldwell, who had disappeared from his father’s ranch in Taylor, North Dakota in 1907.

The Caldwells were a curious lot. Jay Allen’s father James was an entrepreneur of questionable probity who made a fortune during the Civil War, only to lose it all in the Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1883 he started over in North Dakota, and became a wealthy rancher. However, dreadful things tended to befall everyone around him. His sister’s children died in a fire in one of his sheds. An employee vanished without a trace. Another worker was found mysteriously dead in his bed. This same man’s wife drowned in a river. James Caldwell’s wife soon died as well. And then Jay Allen exited the picture. He was known to be on very bad—even violent—terms with his father, who seems to have been a generally nasty customer, and it was rumored that James Caldwell played a role in his son’s disappearance.

The women visited the amnesiac in Rochester, but although he appeared to recognize them, and showed knowledge of Caldwell family history, they finally decided he was an inch too short to be their nephew.

Some time after this incident, a Mrs. Pitkin, a nurse at the hospital, obtained “J.C.R.'s” release by posing as his mother, and took him to the Caldwell ranch. Jay Allen’s sister May Caldwell Moran immediately recognized him as her brother, and gave descriptions of various identifying scars that matched ones found on the mystery man. He also recognized various landmarks around the area, and made a drawing illustrating how he had been assaulted by unidentified people in 1907. At least one hundred local residents agreed this was the missing Caldwell. However, Jay Allen’s father James was equally adamant this was not his son.  The elder Caldwell asserted that "J.C.R." was, in reality, the son of the nurse, Mrs. Pitkin.

A lawsuit was brought on “J.C.R.’s” behalf to establish that he was indeed Jay Allen Caldwell, but it failed, for one simple reason:  “J.C.R.” was found in Waseca two months before Jay Allen was reported missing. Despite this, May Moran took him into her own home, insisting he was her long-lost brother.

Four months after the conclusion of the court case, the Caldwells suffered yet another tragedy. In May 1917, James Caldwell and his second wife were shot to death by their hired man, Mike Chumack. Chumack claimed that he had caught Caldwell molesting a fourteen-year-old orphan girl who worked for Mrs. Caldwell. The two men quarreled, and Chumack claimed that when he brought up the issue of Jay Allen, the older man went for his gun, and Chumack was forced to kill him in self-defense.

As it turned out, the murders took place under entirely different circumstances. It was Chumack himself who was abusing the girl, and when the Caldwells caught him in the act, he killed them. He then begged the girl to shoot him, but when she refused, he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself. Chumack was eventually ruled insane and sent to a mental hospital.

James Caldwell’s will left $1000 to each of his two sisters, with the remainder of his sizable fortune going into a twenty-five year trust for Jay Allen, should he ever be found. His daughter May received a mere twenty-five dollars, presumably as punishment for her stubborn loyalty to “J.C.R.”  Over the next few years, the newspapers periodically reported "identifications" of "J.C.R." as some missing man or another, but apparently all these attempts to solve the mystery failed to last.

In 1919, a resident of St. Paul, Minnesota named Mrs. Lambert V. Blue came forward, insisting that “J.C.R.” was her former husband, James Philip Harris, who set out on a fishing trip in 1907 and never returned. It must be noted that her eagerness to claim the man stemmed from the fact that if he was the missing fisherman, Harris' daughter Dorothy stood to inherit $250,000.  After Harris disappeared, and was eventually presumed dead, the stock he owned in the merchandise company of which he was the manager reverted to the business.  Dorothy Harris and Mrs. Blue were grimly determined to get their hands on this wealth, not to mention the Florida mansion Harris had owned.

Unfortunately, this mystery man did not find a permanent home with Miss Harris or Mrs. Blue.  In 1921, it was reported that "J.C.R." had returned to North Dakota, and was living as a vagrant beggar.  I have found no further newspaper reports about him, so God knows what finally happened to the poor man.

Was “J.C.R.” Jay Allen Caldwell? James P. Harris? Or someone else altogether? Did James Caldwell have a guilty secret regarding his son’s disappearance? We will never know.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

A curious case of "amnesia" from 1953:

Police were never able to trace North's movements from New Zealand to London, but "amnesia" was accepted as the solution to the mystery.  (Even though North had never before suffered from memory loss and the poor befuddled man had no idea why he should want to leave his "normal environment.")  It all sounds very tidy and straightforward, if highly unusual, but Harold T. Wilkins, who mentioned the incident in his book "Mysteries Solved and Unsolved," made an excellent point:  "Who paid the not inconsiderable airliner passage to London from New Zealand; since it seems very unlikely that a schoolmaster, on the way to school in New Zealand, with no thought of going beyond his school, would have been carrying in his pocket wallet the fairly large sum for a trip he had not planned to take?"

As far as I can tell, no answer to that question--or the riddle of why it had proved impossible to determine where and how he traveled to London--was ever found.