Arne Gandy's Final Phone Call

"Hackensack Record," May 24, 1934, via Newspapers.com

20-year-old Arne Gandy of Teaneck, New Jersey, was a restless, adventurous young man who, like so many restless, adventurous sorts throughout history, felt the call of the high seas.  After several voyages to South America, in December 1933 he signed on to serve as “messboy” on the “President Harrison.”  Gandy carried with him a letter of introduction to Stanley Dollar, president of the ship’s line.  After the “President Harrison” arrived in San Francisco, he planned to ask Dollar for a rating of cadet.  Gandy planned to make sailing his life’s work.

Unfortunately, when Gandy landed in San Francisco, he was unable to get a meeting with Dollar, and he agreed to continue his job on the “President Harrison.”  However, on January 5, 1934, he mysteriously left the ship, in such a hurry that he left all his belongings behind.  The “President Harrison,” on the assumption that he had deserted, sailed off without him.  We know nothing of Gandy’s subsequent actions.

At 2:45 a.m. on January 10, Arne’s mother back in Teaneck was awakened by the ringing of the telephone.  When she answered, she was confused, and a bit frightened, to hear it was an utterly bizarre call.  A man’s unfamiliar voice went into a rambling monologue.  “The kid is OK,” he told her.  “What I said about him in my letter is all true.  He is a fine kid.”  When Mrs. Gandy asked who was speaking, her question was ignored.  The man went on, “I told the truth and he’s coming home now.”  Mrs. Gandy said he must have the wrong number, as she knew nothing about any letter.  When she asked what number he was calling, he repeated the Gandy’s private, unlisted number--known only to family and their closest friends.

Mrs. Gandy heard Arne’s voice in the background, and asked to talk to him.  The man chuckled and said, “That’s all right; he’s coming home now.”  She then heard a roaring sound, and the man sighed, “I am helpless.  Here I lie propped up on pillows, helpless.  I can’t move.”  His voice began fading out.  Then, she heard another voice saying, “When shall we operate, doctor?”  A third voice replied, “Right away.”  Then the line went dead.  Mrs. Gandy quickly awakened her husband Curtis.  Mr. Gandy, oddly enough, had been in the middle of a nightmare where either Arne or the boy’s twin, Curtis III--he couldn’t tell which--was in serious trouble.

The Gandys contacted the telephone operator, who told them that it had been a station to station call from San Francisco.  They were unable to find out who had placed the call.

At about the same time as this ominous communication, Arne’s twin brother Curtis, who was a cadet aboard the freighter “Scanstates,” which was then in the mid-Atlantic en route to Denmark, had an alarming dream where he heard Arne, clearly in great distress, calling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

Early on the morning of January 11, the naked body of a young man was found floating in San Francisco Bay.  At first, the corpse was known only as “John Doe No. 4,” but after the local police sent on the body’s fingerprints to the National Bureau of Identification in Washington D.C., a check of the fingerprint records of steamship lines identified the dead man as Arne Gandy.  This was corroborated by checking Arne’s dental records.  It was believed that Arne had been in the water since January 9--the day before Mrs. Gandy received the mysterious phone call where she heard her son’s voice.

The autopsy revealed that Arne had died by drowning.  The coroner added, “whether by accident or force could not be determined.”  There were no signs of external injury.  Arne’s parents insisted that their son was a cheerful, healthy young man who had no reason to commit suicide, but police saw no indications of foul play, either.

It is depressing to relate that this superlative bit of weirdness ended on a frustratingly inconclusive note.  Arne’s wealthy father hired private detectives to investigate his son’s mysterious death, but they were unable to make any more progress than the police had.  We will never know why Arne deserted his ship, or whether his death was due to suicide, accident, or murder.

And needless to say, we will never know who made that eerie phone call in the early hours of January 10…where the voice of a dead man could be heard.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Everyone here at Strange Company HQ wishes you a happy Halloween!

In which an 18th century priest meets a troll.

Gunnhild, Mother of Kings.

The strange case of the Crow Hill Bones.

So now we know what is the oldest pub in England.

The Abominable Snowman visits Massachusetts.

I thought you'd like to know that someone is cataloging public restrooms.  (And, yeah, I don't want to know what this person's other hobbies might be.)

All right, I know you're itching to read about coffin torpedoes.

Video killed the fairylore star.

A haunted Pennsylvania farm.

Rewritng Mesoamerican history.

Gef, everyone's favorite talking mongoose.

A UFO wave in Puerto Rico.

A terrifying wake.

The difference between Suffragettes and Suffragists.

More particularly disturbing deaths.

Mysteries of the pyramids.

A brief history of dangerous fairies.

AI is helping scientists recover a library from Pompeii.

When London had a railway for the dead.

A real-life Dr. Frankenstein.

An example of ancient Roman nanotech.

The Green Man of Pittsburgh.

How Bruce McCandless earned the Medal of Honor.

An 1888 electric vehicle.  (As an aside, "Flocken Elektrowagen" would be a great name for an electropunk band.)

Ivan the Terrible wanted to marry Elizabeth I, and wouldn't they have been a fun couple.

Three hangings in Pennsylvania.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a young man's eerie death.  In the meantime, here's Linda Thompson.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

One for the “mini mysteries” file: This unresolved poisoning case was reported in the “South Wales Argus,” February 8, 1934.

How did cyanide of potassium, used for electro-plating, find its way into a teacup from which a girl of 20 drank tea and died shortly afterwards? This was the mystery inquired into at Sheffield on Wednesday.

An inquest was held on the girl, Lilian Charlotte Corbridge, of Ripon-street, Sheffield, who drank the tea on January 30 at the electro-plating works of Messrs. Biggins Brothers, Ltd., Arundel-street, Sheffield.

A verdict of "Accidental death" was returned, and the jury expressed the opinion that the poison should be locked up.  The evidence, said the Coroner, suggested that different arrangements ought to be made as to where the girls had their meals. "It has not been definitely ascertained how the poison got into the cup of tea," added the Coroner.

Evidence was given that tea was brewed for a girl employee named Catherine Stringer in a teacup and for Corbridge in a teapot.  Stringer complained about the nasty taste of her tea, which she threw away, whereupon Corbridge gave her some from her teapot.

Having thus run short of tea, Corbridge took the kettle and teapot to get some water, and poured tea out of the teapot into a cup. After drinking she reeled, and another girl dashed to the telephone for assistance. Pointing to her teacup, Corbridge said: "It is the tea."

Mr. Mark Leslie Biggins, an electro-plater, said he gave Corbridge 12 plated teapots to weigh. They had been in vats containing cyanide of potassium in solution. Asked by the Coroner if he thought there could be any poisonous solution left in those teapots he replied "Very, very little."

Dr. J. M. Webster, police surgeon, said he found poison in the girl's teacup, but none in the teapot. From the post-mortem examination he was of the opinion that the girl died from swallowing potassium cyanide.

And that seems to have been that.

The Plum Tree Hanging

I’ve noticed that in recent years, Halloween decorations have grown increasingly macabre.  In my neighborhood, at least, grinning Jack o’lanterns and innocuous ghosts are being replaced by ghoulish skeletons (both human and animal,) gravestones, knife-wielding devils, and various other ugly monstrosities.  Last year, a house near me put in their yard such a revolting handmade display of chopped-up doll parts covered in unsettlingly realistic-looking fake blood that some neighbors complained vigorously enough to get the DIY abattoir removed.  However, as ghastly as it all is, at least nobody around here has hung a genuine dead body outside anyone’s house.  To date, at least.  For an example of such real-life Halloween horror, you would have to look back to Evansville, Indiana in 1925.

While returning from a party on October 31, a couple named George and Helen Erhard saw something large dangling from a plum tree in their front yard.  At first, they assumed it was a mannequin someone had left as a holiday prank.  However, when they went closer to the object, they realized that hanging in their property was no dummy, but a very real, and very dead, man.

The man was wearing a fairly pricey serge suit, a cap, a sweater coat, and a shirt.  His necktie had been used as a noose attaching him to the tree branch.  The body carried no identification, money, or jewelry.  His most notable features were a missing finger on the right hand, and an anchor and heart tattoo on one arm.

Despite the way the body was found, it was soon determined that this was no simple suicide.  The dead man had suffered two skull fractures, a deep laceration to the head, as well and other cuts and bruises to the body.  He had evidently been badly beaten with a blunt object before being dragged to the tree.  He had died about an hour before the Erhards discovered him.  George’s mother, who lived with the Erhards, told police that at 10:30 pm--about an hour before George and Helen arrived home--she had been awakened by her dog barking.  She then heard a woman’s scream, and the sound of a car screeching swiftly away.

A man named John Zakrzewsky heard of the gruesome find.  He thought the body’s description matched that of his brother Seraphine, a punch press operator from Toledo, Ohio, who had disappeared from his home on October 25th.  On November 3, John was able to identify the corpse as that of Seraphine.  John told the police that he could not explain his brother’s disappearance or his subsequent murder.  According to John, Seraphine was a law-abiding sort with no enemies.  However, he did admit that Seraphine may have become “mixed up with bootleggers.”  (Although becoming “mixed-up” with such characters was an excellent way to get into serious trouble, this intriguing clue went nowhere.)

"Evansville Courier," November 4, 1925, via Newspapers.com

John also informed police that he did not believe Seraphine owned the clothes he was wearing when he died--they were too good a quality to belong to someone of his modest means.  (It was later learned that Seraphine had been given most of his clothing from a worker at an Evansville Salvation Army.)  Seraphine had spent a few days in Evansville before his death--he had been seen eating alone several times in a local restaurant--but it was never determined what he was doing in the city, where he had no known friends or other ties.

Witnesses claimed that between the hours of 10:30 and 11 on the night of the crime, а “dilapidated touring car” was parked near the Erhard farm.  Three men who looked like “underworld characters,” were seen on the road nearby.  These men were never identified, leaving it as anyone’s guess if they had anything to do with the tragedy.

And, with that, the murder investigation quickly came to a sputtering end.  Although the police duly interrogated all possible witnesses/suspects (including the Erhards,) no one had any information about who might have committed this odd, seemingly motiveless murder.  Sadly, the crime known as the “Plum Tree Hanging” soon disappeared from the newspapers, the police file was sent to the “cold case” bin, and life went on.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

The Strange Company HQ staffers wish you pleasant reading!

A handy reminder that bees are weird.

A look at medieval executioners.

The world's oldest dated printed book.

A stupid theory about the Salem Witch Trials that refuses to die.

The 11th century abbot and the recycled sarcophagus.

The duel between W.B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley.

The man who made a living from being a conjoined twin.

The death of Pretty Boy Floyd.

Remembering the Cat Lady of Spitalfields.

A pattern has been found in cases of alleged reincarnation.

The legend of "Mountain Charley."

The only prison with its own zoo.

In search of the Woman in Black.

A meeting with Bigfoot.

The oldest known dwelling in the Western Hemisphere.

The mystery of the Dancing Plague.

Remembering the Aberfan disaster.

Not to worry, just empty space sending out mysterious signals.

The War of Jenkins' Ear.

The cat who missed out on being the hero of Rikers Island.

If a ghost wants his widow to get the funeral money, you should probably oblige.

A notorious 19th century swindler.

New York's "house of many mysteries."

The woman who could sew with her tongue.  And no improper jokes, please.  I know what the internet is like.

When the Royal Society went ghost-hunting.

The mystery of the "Tully monster."

Some very disturbing deaths.

George III visits Oxford.

A really bad 18th century job.

A murderous medical student.

The real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.

A cave of dragon bones.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an unsolved Halloween murder.  In the meantime, here's something a bit different.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I guess you could say that this is one of those UFO stories that has everything, including satanic fungus.  The “Jacksonville Journal,” January 28, 1974:

After sighting an Unidentified Flying Object and being felled by a ray apparently from an occupant of the craft, a strange "devil's head" was found growing in his yard, a Jacksonville man has reported to the UFO Research Institute.

Norman R. Chastain, 62, of 2507 Kershaw Drive W., said he delayed reporting the strange incident after it occurred for fear he would be ridiculed as "some kind of a nut."

Chastain's photograph with the "devil's head" appeared in the Journal nearly two years ago after he brought the plant to the newspaper and reported finding it in his yard.

At that time, however, he did not mention the earlier incident. He said he is telling the story now because of the investigation being made by the research institute.

Chastain is an electrician with the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Co. He was out in the St. Johns River fishing late at night Jan. 26, 1972, near the eastern tip of Blount Island.  At 3 a.m., he was sitting at anchor in a slack tide about 50 feet from shore when he noticed "several orange and blue lights from over St. Johns Bluff Monument," he said.  At first he thought it was a mosquito control or police helicopter.

Chastain said his boat lights were on and a Coleman lantern was burning.  He said the object made no noise.

"After a few minutes, the lights came directly towards my boat and I could make out the outline of something like a half of a ball with lights flashing and changing colors about every minute," he said.

He said the object was about 150 feet in the air directly over his boat. He snapped off the lights on his boats and turned out the lantern and the object moved slowly back to the bluff.  His boat had run aground by this time and he went ashore, he said.

Chastain said he went looking for a lever to pry his boat free, found a piece of 2-by-6 wood and was carrying it back when he stopped to rest, 75 feet from his boat.

"I raised my spotlight to see if my boat was still in the muck and, in the edges of the bushes, I saw the darndest-looking human-like creature one could ever imagine," he said.

He said he dropped the timber and immediately was hit by a "brilliant white light." It made him dizzy and he lay down on the grass.

His arms and legs became numb and tingled, but he stayed on the ground, praying, until daybreak, he said.  He then crawled farther inland and stayed until about noon, when his strength returned.

He swam out to his boat, which had drifted about 50 feet from shore. He noticed an "overpowering stench" in his clothes and hair that was not present until he met the "devil-looking creature."  He said he washed and threw away his old clothes before going home. Still his wife commented that he didn't look right and asked if he were all right. Chastain said he told her he got seasick.

Three nights later, Chastain said, he found himself dreaming that he was on a strange planet. Suddenly, he was awakened by a clap of thunder and saw that it was raining outside.  He also noticed the same overpowering smell he experienced three days before, he said.  Chastain remained awake the rest of the night, holding a gun.  When morning came, he went outside.

"There in the grass directly behind my boat at the same distance the creature was positioned on Blount Island was a cluster of several flesh-colored heads looking at me and they looked so much like that devil looking creature I saw on the island that my first thought was the UFO was over my house that night looking for me."

He went to his neighbors' homes looking for witnesses but they were all away. He dug up the plants and brought one to the Journal, he said.

"Blood" was coming from the plant, he said. it also had teeth, big eyes, a wide mouth and pointed ears, Chastain said.

Chastain said each of the plants shriveled up into a ball about six hours after they came out. No morе have grown since then, he said.

 

Since the sighting, Chastain has been back to the same spot on Blount island several times, he said. In fact, he was fishing in the same spot recently and caught a 40-pound red bass, good enough for a third place in a fishing tournament.

He says the reaction from persons he tells his story to is "peculiar."  

"The educated person is very, very interested," he said. "Those who are uneducated--the reaction is nil."

"Railroad men are the hardest to convince," he said. That is the reason he took one of the plants to show his fellow workers, some of whom advised him to move out of the house, he said.

When the Journal contacted the University of Florida's botany department, a mycologist there appeared to recognize the plant immediately from a verbal description.

He said it is a stinkhorn, very common in Florida, especially during cold weather after a drizzly rain. It is not poisonous, but generally is not considered edible because of the smell, he said.  It is a form of mushroom.

It was not until he attended a lecture at Florida Junior College by Stanton Friedman, director of the UFO Research Institute, that Chastain decided to report the incident.  He had letters from the institute, which is located in California, indicating his report is being investigated.

Friedman told the Journal by telephone that he is a nuclear physicist who spends all of his spare time investigating UFOS.

Chastain said that he submitted his story to the Journal now "to let the public try and decide whether or not the saucers are from Planet Earth or some other planet."

The Bootleg Boyer Baby

If you are at all familiar with my blog, you know that I delight in sharing moral tales that provide both spiritual uplift and valuable practical advice at navigating this thing called Life.  For instance, if you are going to fake a pregnancy in order to gain a claim to your husband’s inheritance, make sure you have all your paperwork in order.  Acquiring bogus heirs is not a job for amateurs.

Read on.

In 1902, Joseph Boyer, the owner of a machine shop in St. Louis, Missouri, took over as company president of what became the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, which he subsequently relocated to Detroit.  The company soon became a huge global success, which, naturally, made Boyer an extremely wealthy man.

However, in 1913, dark clouds hovered over the horizon for Boyer and other rich Americans, in the form of the Revenue Act, which brought in a federal income tax.  The ominous prospect of turning a substantial amount of his income over to Uncle Sam--and, one would like to think, fatherly affection--inspired Boyer to prudently shelter most of his wealth in the form of lavish trust funds for his seven children.  One of these trust funds--the one in the name of Joseph’s son Myron--was to lead to some unexpected complications.

In 1921, Myron married one Laura Lucille Miller.  In one important sense, Laura was an unlikely choice for his bride.  The childless Myron was anxious to have an heir to his substantial fortune, but as Laura was forty years old at the time of their wedding, it seemed unlikely she would ever have children.

However miracles do happen.  Just as the Biblical Elizabeth became pregnant with John the Baptist at an advanced age, in mid-1923 Laura was able to announce the joyous news that she was pregnant.  One day in November, as her due date approached, Laura sent Myron off on some errand which kept him away from home for a few hours.  As at the time he left, his bride was showing no signs of imminent labor, one can understand Myron’s astonishment when he returned to find that in his absence, he had become the father of a fine baby boy.  They named the child “Joseph Andrew Boyer III.”

As far as we know, all went well for the little family until about a year later, when Myron, for reasons lost to history, began to doubt the baby’s paternity.  He quietly hired private investigators to see if his sudden doubts about Laura’s fidelity had any basis in fact.  He wound up getting much more than he bargained for.  The PIs soon informed Myron that sadly, yes, the baby was not his biological son.  And guess what?  Little Joseph was not Laura’s biological son, either.

When confronted with the investigator’s findings, Laura realized the game was up and she had no choice but to tell all.  She had paid a handsome sum to a Detroit doctor for him to find her a baby--any baby would do.  The doctor found a pregnant, unmarried 19-year-old in Windsor, Ontario, who was very anxious to find a home for her baby.  He arranged for Laura to adopt the child, who was then brought to Detroit.  And then Laura--after presumably divesting herself of a very large pillow--staged her little tableau of new motherhood.

Discovering that your wife had faked a pregnancy and brought in a ringer admittedly would be a hard thing for any husband to accept.  What made it still worse for Myron and the other Boyers was that this child stood to inherit a fortune that they felt he was completely unentitled to possess.  On March 1, 1928, Myron--who had separated from his wife--filed a suit to have the birth certificate of his erstwhile son deleted from official records.  He literally wanted the boy erased from Boyer family history, thus, he hoped, making little Joseph ineligible for any inheritance.  Laura outwardly accepted Myron’s actions, telling reporters that what mattered to her was that she still had her legally adopted son, whom she loved “more than anything else in the world.”

This brought up a new complication:  Was Joseph legally her son?  The necessarily secretive nature of her adoption put that question in doubt.  She had no paperwork proving her claim to the child, the doctor who had arranged the whole business was dead, and the courts had no record of any formal adoption.

But wait, there’s more!  Edith Howarth, the mother of the baby Laura had acquired, was convinced that she had given birth to a girl.  Although the records of the hospital where the birth took place stated that she had had a son, the birth certificate listed the baby as a girl.  In short, nobody could say who Joseph Andrew Boyer III really was at all.

If you’re starting to get a headache at this point in our story, my apologies.

Laura’s legal troubles were just beginning.  As little Joseph had (as far as anyone could tell) been born in Canada, it was highly possible that he was technically an illegal alien facing deportation.  She was summoned to appear before the Federal Immigration Commission in Detroit on March 5, 1928, in order to determine the boy’s legal status in the U.S.  As Laura was unable to find any record to show that she had formally adopted the boy, his fate was looking grim.  However, one of Laura’s attorneys was able to find a last-minute solution.  Edith Howarth signed the necessary papers relinquishing the child, and Laura, at long last, was able to legally establish herself as the boy’s mother.  When she adopted the child, she changed his name to “Dode Alfred Boyer.”  All of this satisfied the immigration officials, and Dode was safe from deportation.

"Bangor News," March 1, 1928, via Newspapers.com

Myron was making it clear that he couldn’t care less what Laura and Dode did, as long as they were unable to get their hands on the Boyer fortune.  Just to make sure, he filed a second lawsuit asking the court to legally bar the boy from any access to the trust fund.  In retaliation, Laura--who was still Myron’s legal wife--filed suit asking that his two lawsuits be dismissed.  Myron’s response was to file a third suit asking that the $800 a month payments the trust fund had been making to Joseph/Dode be cancelled.

The court’s decision on all this wrangling was made on November 22, 1928.  The judge ruled that Dode was not only disinherited from the Boyer estate, the payments from the trust fund were to be immediately stopped, and Dode’s initial birth records, now known to be fraudulent, were ordered to be erased from public records.  Both Laura and Myron told reporters that they were satisfied with the judge’s decision and were prepared to move on with their separate lives.

The end of the story?  Oh, surely you jest.

As Fate would have it, Myron did not enjoy his legal victory for long.  Just one month later, on December 29, he suddenly collapsed from a heart attack and died.  He had never thought to update his will, dated April 26, 1923, which left “all of my earthly possessions” to “my beloved wife, Laura Miller Boyer.”

This will wound up making a great deal of happy lawyers very wealthy.  Myron’s siblings wasted no time filing lawsuits addressing the question of what, exactly, Myron’s “earthly possessions” were.  The battle centered around his trust fund, which, by then, was a cool $2.5 million.  In brief, Laura’s lawyers said it had belonged to Myron, while Boyer attorneys asserted that after Myron died, the fund reverted to the estate of his father.

The argument dragged on for years, until on July 9, 1937, the court ruled that the Boyers were to give Laura $1.2 million.  This was appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court.  That body reversed the decision.  The United States Supreme Court denied Laura’s appeal, leaving her and Dode without a penny more of Boyer money.

Laura and her son disappeared from the newspaper headlines, leading anonymous, but, let us hope, not unhappy lives.  Laura found work as a saleslady until her death in 1940.  Dode died in Long Beach, California, in 1995.  When people would casually ask him about his family background, I wonder what he told them?