Newspaper Clipping of the Christmas Day

Via Newspapers.com

This startling story--which sounds like something out of a Christmas-themed horror movie--appeared in the “Lichfield Mercury,” January 4, 1907:

A Belfast schoolboy, named Samuel Atchison, has had a terrible Christmas experience, which he is likely to remember to the end of his days.

On Christmas Eve the lad went out to gather holly for the decoration of his heme, and was lost from that hour until Sunday night, when he was found in the attic of an untenanted house, at the point of death and wasted to a skeleton. All through the heavy snowstorms of the last few days the police and bands of searchers had dragged ponds, swamps, and rivers for his body without result, and the circumstances of the disappearance and recovery of the boy are so remarkable as to lead the police to the belief that it is a case of kidnapping. No sounds had been heard by the occupants of the house on either side of that in which the lad was found until Friday last, on which day both neighbours recall they heard what they took to be a faint knocking. No attention, however, was paid until Sunday, when the rapping became so persistent that one of the nextdoor neighbours scaled the yard wall and entered the house, he searched every room without result until he came to the attic, the door of which was closed and the handle had been removed. The neighbour forced open the door and, entering, found the room in darkness, the snow having covered the skylight.

Striking a match he saw the figure of a lad lying unconscious on the floor. Nearby lay his coat, torn to rags, and his waistcoat and trousers were likewise in shreds, the latter, in fact, having only the upper part whole. The searcher, who had read the accounts of Atchison’s disappearance, immediately concluded that this was the missing boy, and he sent at once for the father. The latter hastened to the empty house and, stripping off his coat, wrapped up the lad and rushed home through the binding snowstorm. Two doctors were speedily in attendance.

All their unremitting care and attention have been so far successful that, though the poor boy is still in grave danger, there is, however, some slight hope of his ultimate recovery.  On Monday morning the police made a thorough examination of the attic, and found the inside of the door all clawed where the boy, in the agonies of starvation, had sought to tear through the panels with his nails, and even with his teeth. A correspondent who saw the boy says as he lay moaning and tossing in bed he cried out again and again to imaginary assailants to have pity on him, but there was nothing coherent in his speech, the only person he seemed to recognise being his mother. How the boy came to be in that house, why the handle should have been removed from the lock, whether the interval from Monday until Friday had been entirely spent inside the room, and whether it was a case of kidnapping are all questions which are greatly puzzling the police. The doctors stated on Monday that in a very short time—a matter of minutes, in fact—the boy would have been a corpse, and it is probable that his mind will be permanently affected by his terrible experience.  It is hoped, however, that when he recovers consciousness some light will be thrown on the mystery.

What adds to the strangeness of this case is the fact that I haven’t been able to find any published resolution.  By the end of January, the story seemed to have disappeared from the newspapers.  I am unable to say if Samuel fully recovered from his ordeal, or if the puzzle of his Christmas imprisonment was ever solved.

The Taking of Joan Gay Croft

"Tulsa Tribune," April 9, 1948, via Newspapers.com

On April 9, 1947, the town of Woodward, Oklahoma, (population 5500) was slammed by a monster tornado.  What made the disaster even worse was that a telephone strike meant that the outside world was unable to give the town any advance warning.  Woodwardians literally did not know what hit them.

That night, the two-mile wide tornado destroyed the town.  Almost instantly, more than a thousand people were injured, over a hundred of them fatally.  However, the Woodward tornado is still remembered today not just for the death and devastation, but because of a haunting mystery associated with the event.

Hutchinson “Olin” Croft was a successful sheep farmer; a man of some importance in his area.  He lived in Woodward with his wife Cleta and their two children, Joan and Geri.  The tornado flattened their home, killing Cleta instantly.  Olin was seriously injured.  Four-year-old Joan and eight-year-old Geri, on the other hand, were only slightly hurt.  The three survivors were brought to Woodward’s only hospital.  As they weren’t in need of emergency care, the two girls were sent to wait in the hospital’s basement while staff looked after those in need of immediate help.

Later that night, as the Croft girls lay together on a cot, two men wearing khaki Army-style clothing came into the hospital basement announcing that they had come for Joan.  As one of the men picked her up, the child protested that she didn’t want to leave her sister.  The men reassured her that they would be coming back for Geri.  The men told hospital staff that they were friends of the Croft family, and were taking Joan to Oklahoma City Hospital, where relatives were waiting for her.  It was a plausible enough story, and the hospital workers, overwhelmed by the injured and dying tornado victims, were too busy and too exhausted to ask any more questions.  The men, who appeared to be rescue workers or officials of some sort, were allowed to depart with the girl.

Soon after Joan was taken away, Olin's sister Ruth was told that her brother's name was listed in the local newspaper as being among the deceased.  She rushed to the hospital to find her orphaned nieces and take them to her home.  When she got there, she was told that Olin was alive and would recover.  He had been confused with one "Olan Hutchinson," who had died in the tornado.  When Ruth went to the hospital basement to check on the girls, Geri told her what had happened to Joan.  When Ruth called Oklahoma City Hospital, she was told not only that Joan was not there, but wasn't expected to be transferred to them.  The increasingly panicked Ruth called all nearby hospitals, the morgue, and an orphanage, without result.  The police were called in, but were unable to find any trace of the girl.  Despite the wide publicity the case received, it was as if she and her two kidnappers vanished into mist the moment they left the hospital.

No one has ever seen Joan again.  To date, it’s a complete mystery who the men in khaki were, how they knew the Croft girls were in the basement, and why Joan was targeted for abduction.  Over the years, several women came forward in the belief that they were Joan, but these claims were all proved to be incorrect. 

There was one intriguing postscript to the mystery.  Robert E. Lee, a reporter for “The Oklahoman,” wrote a number of articles about the Croft kidnapping.  In April 1999, he received an email from an anonymous writer asking if he would like to know “what really happened to Joan Gaye and where she has been this past 54 years?”  The writer continued, “She has been and is living in OKC off and on since 1956 under a different name with the full knowledge of her father, Orlin Croft!  She even graduated from an OKC high school under her different name.”  The writer provided an email address where, they claimed, Joan could be contacted.  

The newspaper’s computer technicians could not trace the email address.  Lee wrote back to his mysterious informant, who replied, “I know this time of year there are many people who crawl out of the woodwork claiming to be the ‘lost’ girl, but I was never physically lost.  My immediate family(s) knew where I was.  I just didn’t know who I was.

“Until just lately I never faced the fact that Cleta Croft, my mother died upon me.  I buried this information deep within my long term memory and refused to accept.

“Joan” provided an email address where she could be contacted, adding “We will arrange to meet in person to discuss the details.  I propose we meet at Penn Square for the first meeting.  I would like to meet in public, but not publicly and without photos.  Please let me know a time and date convenient for you.  I am on the internet on most MWF between 9 and 10:30 a.m.  As to compensation, I would prefer none!”

Lee wrote back agreeing to meet his correspondent, but never received a reply.  The email address “Joan” had provided soon stopped accepting messages.

Was this really the missing girl?  Or--as seems more likely--just another of the many warped hoaxers who insert themselves into high-profile crimes?  If Lee was the victim of a cruel prank, that leaves us back to Square One:  Who took little Joan Croft, and why?

The Two Disappearances of Frederick Brosseau

Kennewick Courier, September 5, 1913, via Newspapers.com

Whenever children unaccountably disappeared in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common for people to instantly suspect they were kidnapped by "gypsies." These suppositions were generally proven false, to the extent that stories about such alleged abductions are now thought of as vintage "urban myths."

However, on at least one occasion, this conjecture was apparently proven to be correct. And the case only got weirder from there.

Our story opens on October 21, 1896, in the small northern New York town of Sissonville. At around six p.m., a seven-year-old boy named Frederick Brosseau was seen playing on a bridge near the lumber mill where his father John Brosseau worked. The boy often waited there in the evenings to meet his dad and walk home with him. That was the last time anyone saw Frederick. Almost immediately, the entire community turned out to look for the child. The mill was shut down and carefully examined. The local river was dragged and the surrounding countryside diligently searched. Not a trace of little Frederick could be found anywhere. The frustrated townspeople could only assume that the boy had drowned, and his body had become lodged on the river bottom.

The years passed by, with the tragic mystery becoming nearly forgotten by everyone except the Brosseau family. Then, in August 1913, the puzzle of Frederick's disappearance appeared to be resolved, and in an entirely startling way. On a boat traveling along the Ottawa River, a young man approached one of his fellow passengers, a Catholic priest. He explained that many years before, when he was a small child, he had been abducted by gypsies, who had treated him with great brutality. He stated that the gypsy caravan had taken him through a number of foreign countries, as they spent each winter abroad. Worse still, the gypsies had stolen a number of other children. The boys were used as virtual slaves, and the girls were sold for large amounts of cash. He had just now managed to escape from his captors. The caravan was still in Canada, with one kidnapped child, a girl, still in their possession. All the youth could remember about himself was that although the gypsies insisted on calling him "Patrick," he knew his real name was Frederick, and he had come from someplace in northern New York. The priest, convinced the young man was telling the truth, brought him to a Trappist monastery in Oka, a village in Quebec.

In an effort to discover the stranger's true identity, the little information he was able to provide about himself was broadcast in the local news media, along with his photo. The monks contacted a Father Marron, who lived in northern New York. Perhaps he would have some clues suggesting who the young man really was. By a remarkable coincidence, one Kate Perry, a sister of Frederick Brosseau's mother, lived in Montreal, and saw the newspaper articles about the mystery man. She was intrigued enough to visit the Oka monastery, carrying with her a photograph of Frederick taken shortly before he disappeared. When she compared the photo to the as-yet-unidentified young man, she became convinced he was her long-missing nephew. She immediately shared her astonishing news with the Brosseaus. Mr. and Mrs. Brosseau, along with one of their other sons, Frank, and Father Marron, immediately headed for Oka. Upon their arrival, the parents immediately recognized the stranger as their son. It was established that the young man had the same distinctive birthmark on his arm that Frederick had had. Plus, he so resembled Frank Brosseau that the two could have passed as twins.

The Canadian police immediately went in search of this caravan of kidnappers. The authorities were forced to instruct the newly-discovered Frederick Brosseau to remain on the monastery grounds, as he would be a crucial material witness when the gypsies were caught and put on trial. His parents had no choice but to return home without their long-lost son, but at least they now had the assurance that before long, they would be reunited for good.

Mr. and Mrs. Brosseau, and the man who claimed to be their son Frederick. Pittsburgh Press, September 21, 1913.

Unfortunately, a new danger soon emerged. The widespread publicity given to the return of the long-missing boy ensured that his former captors also learned where he was. It was reported that the gypsies made a number of attempts to steal the young man from the monastery, but the monks managed to foil all their evil plans.

Or so they initially thought. Just days after his joyful meeting with his family, the newly-identified Frederick Brosseau vanished from sight once more. On August 22, 1913, he was seen in the monastery's courtyard, talking to a stranger. Frederick seemed worried and upset. A few minutes later, he was gone.

What had happened? It was presumed that the gypsies had somehow threatened or coerced him into returning to their custody, but no one could say for certain why the young man made a second disappearance. Soon after "Frederick" vanished from the monastery, someone matching his description was seen boarding a train from New York, in the company of a woman claiming to be his mother. Was this the missing man? No one could say.

Was this enigmatic youth even the real Frederick? The Montreal Chief of Police for one, was skeptical. He had information suggesting that the mysterious young man had, in reality, one "Patrick Saileure," a barber who had been living in Montreal for years. The Police Chief was convinced the man identified as Frederick was either delusional or a sick practical joker.

Who really was this man? Why did he vanish so suddenly and oddly? Was any of his bizarre story true? And if he was an impostor, what happened to the real Brosseau boy?

We'll never know the answers to any of those questions. Because this time, Frederick Brosseau never did come back.

Where is Kenneth Beasley?

Atlanta Constitution, February 17, 1905, via Newspapers.com

A while back, I wrote about the tangled tale surrounding the disappearance, and presumed kidnapping, of a small boy named Melvin Horst. Although the following case is much more obscure, it has many striking similarities to the Horst mystery.

In 1905, a family named Beasley lived on a beautiful and prosperous farm just outside the small town of Poplar Branch, Currituck County, North Carolina. They were what used to be called “people of solid worth.” The head of the household, Samuel Beasley, was a state senator, and many believed he was destined for higher offices. His wife Carrie was admired as a kindly and accomplished woman. The couple had three children: seventeen-year-old Moran, eight-year-old Kenneth, and Ethel, who was four. Kenneth was a handsome, gentle boy who did well at school. Other children liked him, and adults loved him.

Although the Beasleys were admired and respected in their community, there was one glaring exception to their popularity: if you were to ask Joshua Harrison what he thought of Samuel Beasley, the answer would likely be completely unprintable. Harrison was a tall man in his fifties, with a formidable beard and a temper to match. He was such a hothead that in his younger days he had twice stood trial for murder, but in both instances he won an acquittal.

Harrison supplemented his farming income by selling homemade wine out of his barn. It was said to be very good wine, and, judging by the frequent rowdiness emanating from his unofficial tavern, very potent as well. Many of the locals disapproved of his enterprise, and foremost among them was the upright, sober, and politically powerful Samuel Beasley. In 1903, he got a bill passed through the state legislature outlawing the sale of wine in Currituck County.

Harrison, unsurprisingly, was not pleased. The following year, he happened to run into Beasley on the road between their farms, and made his wrath known in no uncertain terms.

“I hear that 1903 legislation was for me,” he scowled.

“If you heard that,” Beasley replied calmly, “you heard right; for you are the only person in Currituck creating a disturbance, and the people petitioned the legislature on the subject.”

“I’ll be damned if I don’t sell it in spite of ‘em,” Harrison retorted. “If I can’t sell it in gallons I’ll sell it in barrels, and the people can come and get it. When they stop me from selling it they’ll be God damned sorry for it.”

After this exchange, the two men avoided each other.

Life appeared to return to normal. On the morning of February 13, 1905, young Kenneth Beasley dressed, had breakfast, and began his walk to school. On his way out the door, he told his mother, “I’ve seen some mighty pretty puppies, and I want one.”

Little did she know those were the last words she would ever hear him say.

Kenneth’s day at school progressed in its usual uneventful fashion. By the time of the noon recess, the temperature had warmed enough for him to not bother donning his overcoat and gloves before going outside to play. At 1 pm, the school bell rang summoning students for the afternoon session. All the children returned to the classroom...except Kenneth.

Young Beasley’s cousin, Benny Walker, told the teacher that he had been playing with Kenneth when the bell rang. Instead of heading back to school, Kenneth had turned toward the woods behind them, saying, “I’m going back farther.” Benny did not see him after that.

The truancy of this normally well-behaved boy was deeply puzzling--even more so when the teacher saw that Kenneth’s coat and gloves were still in the cloakroom. If he had planned to run away, surely he would have taken them with him?

The schoolmaster sent another boy, Everett Wright, to go look for Kenneth. He returned with the news that Beasley was nowhere to be found. Then Benny Walker was dispatched to make a more thorough search. Walker scoured the woods, then made his way to a nearby store and asked the proprietor, a Mr. Woodhouse, if he had seen anything of the missing boy.

Woodhouse immediately realized something very strange was going on. He locked up his store and accompanied Walker back to the school, where he advised that school should be dismissed and a more comprehensive inspection made. The older boys were organized into search parties while Woodhouse went to gather neighbors. By four pm, one hundred and fifty people, all of them hunters familiar with the swampy timberland, were exploring the area. The search spread for miles, without one trace of Kenneth being found. The following morning, a telegram was sent to Samuel Beasley, who was attending the legislative session in Raleigh. He left for home at once.

By the next day, the search party had doubled in size. Hunting dogs were brought in, but the heavy rain and snow prevented them from picking up a trail. That night, a rumor emerged that a child had been heard crying for help from a lumberman’s cabin deep in the woods. This cabin was said to be inhabited by a mysterious recluse. However, when searchers arrived at the cabin, there was no sign of the hermit--or Kenneth.

On February 24, the “Raleigh News and Observer” printed a letter dealing with Kenneth’s disappearance. Neither the writer or the recipient of this letter were ever identified. It claimed the boy had been kidnapped. “There was a strange man seen up about Barco postoffice and two more places by three different men. He was in a buggy drawn by a black mule and had the boy down between his knees, but the people saw him before they heard the boy was missing. These men say that saw him that the boy was crying and seemed dissatisfied, but the man was talking to him rough.” The writer pointedly added, “Mr. Joshua Harrison went on Tuesday morning and never got back until Sunday. He claimed he had been to Pasquotank.”

Via Newspapers.com

By February 26, the search had been abandoned. It was universally believed that Kenneth had been abducted, and the smart money had one chief suspect in mind.

That same day, Joshua Harrison paid a call at the Beasley home. It was the first time he and Samuel Beasley had spoken since their altercation over wine.

Harrison was irate over the “News and Observer” article. “It’s a batch of lies,” he told Beasley. “I want you to write to the paper and say it was a lie. If your son was kidnapped some of the neighbors did it.”

Beasley coolly replied that, despite what Harrison was clearly implying, he had not written that letter, and would not bother the newspaper’s editors.

Harrison left, vowing that he could prove where he was when Kenneth disappeared.

The Beasley family continued their sad search for the boy. Samuel and his son Moran spent days fruitlessly combing the woods. No clues emerged pointing to Kenneth’s possible whereabouts until March, when the family received a visit from a Shiloh resident named J.J. Pierce. Pierce had seen Kenneth once, three years earlier. And just recently, on March 5, he thought he saw him again, on a Norfolk street car. The child was with two young men who both appeared to be drunk. Pierce said he addressed the boy, but he did not answer.

Norfolk. Joshua Harrison’s daughter, Anna Gallop, kept a boarding house in Norfolk. Hmmm. Samuel went to Norfolk and asked around, but no one claimed to have seen any boy resembling Kenneth. Other rumors and tips came in now and then, and Samuel doggedly investigated them all, with equally empty results.

In September 1906, Beasley attended the opening session of Currituck Courthouse’s fall term. There, he was accosted by T.C. Woodhouse, brother of the shopkeeper. This man had quite an interesting tale to tell.

Woodhouse stated that on September 2, Joshua Harrison had met him on the road, asking for a “heart to heart talk.” Harrison said, “Sam Beasley has never offered enough reward. When he does, the boy will show up in as good condition as he ever was.” He added, “It was damned expensive to keep the boy in the way he is being kept.”

Beasley was stunned. He frantically told Woodhouse to tell Harrison that he would pay any amount of money for Kenneth’s return, promising that no questions would be asked and he would not prosecute. A day or two later, Woodhouse told Beasley that Harrison denied having made his earlier remarks, and refused to discuss the matter further.

Then, an A.B. Parker came forward. He told Beasley that a few days after Kenneth’s disappearance, he overheard Harrison say that “The boy wasn’t lost; that he could put his hand on him any time he wanted him.” Parker was asked the obvious question: why had he kept this fascinating news to himself?

“It was none of my business,” he replied.

The oddly long-delayed revelations kept coming. A storekeeper named J.L. Turner now said that on the day Kenneth vanished, he had seen Harrison driving a buggy pulled by a black mule, containing a boy with his head covered by a tarpaulin. One Millard Morrisette claimed to have seen this same buggy, although he could not say he recognized either the man or the boy. A W.E. Ansell spoke of seeing the mule-drawn buggy with the tarpaulin-covered boy. He could hear the child saying some complaining words and the man speaking to him reassuringly. He was certain the man’s voice was that of Joshua Harrison.

All these men promised Beasley that they were willing to tell their stories in court, under oath. Beasley promptly got a warrant charging Harrison with kidnapping.

When he was arrested, Harrison vehemently denied the charge. More productively, he hired a team of excellent lawyers. His counsel wisely obtained a change in venue--clearly Harrison’s hometown had no great love for him--and the trial was set to begin on March 14, in Pasquotank County.

The trial lasted six days. The previously-mentioned witnesses gave their stories. Still more witnesses corroborated their accounts. During the cross-examinations, the defense brought out a vital point: the road in front of the schoolhouse, was completely open, lined with houses on one side and the sound on the other. It was a busy road, and at the time Kenneth disappeared, the sound was full of fishing boats. Yet nobody in the vicinity claimed to have seen the buggy, the black mule, Joshua Harrison with his distinctive gray beard. How could Harrison have kidnapped the boy in such a public area without anyone noticing?

The defense also offered testimony from Harrison’s family and neighbors that at the time Kenneth disappeared, the defendant was at his home all day, working in his stable yard. Anna Gallop testified that contrary to rumor, Kenneth had never been brought to her boarding house. The prosecution countered this with two witnesses who stated that they had seen Harrison in Norfolk late on the night of February 13.

Faced with all this contradictory witness testimony, the trial essentially hinged on which side was most successful at cross-examination. The jury decided it was the prosecution. On March 19, they returned a guilty verdict.

Harrison’s lawyers appealed to the State Supreme Court, emphasizing the impossibility of their client having abducted the boy without anyone seeing him. They also pointed out the local prejudice against Harrison. The court denied the appeal, and ordered that Harrison be arrested.

News and Observer, September 18, 1907, via Newspapers.com

That same day, as Harrison sat alone in a room of Norfolk’s Gladstone Hotel, a city detective entered the lobby. He instructed the bellboy to summon Harrison.

Harrison slammed the door in the bellboy’s face. A moment later, a gunshot was heard from inside his room. When the bellboy and the detective broke into the room, they found Harrison lying on the floor, quite dead. Next to him was a note he had written, proclaiming his complete innocence.

Henderson Gold Leaf, September 26, 1907, via Newspapers.com

The case was over, if far from resolved. Over the years, Currituck County never really stopped wondering just what had happened to Kenneth Beasley. Among these armchair detectives was a solicitor named Hallet Ward. He was good friends with one of Harrison’s lawyers, W.M. Bond, and the two often discussed the mystery. The two agreed that the case against Harrison had been extremely weak. Also, the people closest to Harrison had argued that while he may have been a hotheaded and even vengeful man, he would never have been so depraved as to take out his wrath on an innocent child.

In 1934, Ward and his family happened to pass through Currituck County. They drove along the sound, stopping for a picnic lunch in front of the building where Kenneth Beasley had once attended school. As they ate, two elderly men walked along the road in front of them. Ward stopped them and introduced himself. He asked if they remembered Harrison’s trial. They most certainly did. As they talked, Ward mentioned the recluse in the cabin, and lamented the fact that law enforcement had never been able to find the man. The two men commented that the hermit had contact only with Joshua Harrison, from whom he bought wine. He also had kept dogs.

Ward suddenly remembered Kenneth’s last words to his mother: “I’ve seen some mighty pretty puppies.”

He and the two men walked along the road where Benny Walker had last seen the boy. As they went deeper into the woods, Ward saw an old rail fence. One of the elderly men pointed to a path on the other side of the fence. That path, he said, led to the hermit’s cabin.

Ward contemplated this new information. So, a path led to the cabin, well out of sight of the main road. He formed a theory: “Kenneth,” he said, “went up that path to that house to see those puppies. Harrison entered the gate in front of the house from the connecting road and picked the boy up at that house and drove on by the back road to the back gate and through it to the Sound Road and on to Norfolk.” Kenneth had no overcoat, and it was a bitterly cold day. That night, he contracted pneumonia and soon died in whatever hideaway Harrison had arranged for him.

Was Ward’s scenario correct? Or--as seems more likely to me--did the anonymous hermit himself use the promise of a puppy to lure Kenneth to his cabin, only to do something unspeakable to the boy? Did he then bury the body somewhere in those woods and flee? Or, on a more hopeful note, could those Carrituck County folk who believed that Kenneth Beasley survived, to be raised in another place, under another name, possibly be correct?

We’ll probably never know.

California Gothic: The Strange Death of Edith Irene Wolfskill

"San Francisco Examiner," August 29, 1903, via Newspapers.com

It seems inevitable that rich, powerful families attract any number of strange incidents. Dysfunction abounds, perhaps as the Universe's way of balancing out all those material advantages. It's unusual, however, for one relatively small family of wealth to become famed for internal feuds, mental illness, odd disappearances, mysterious deaths, and allegations of murder.

It's even more unusual for all these tragedies to center around one particular person. But such was the fate of Edith Irene Wolfskill.

Edith's grandfather, Mathus Wolfskill, was an early settler in Yolo County, California. His brothers, John and William, had already bought a 17,000 acre Mexican land grant. The siblings used this land to cultivate what would become an impressive agricultural empire. By the time Edith was born in 1872, the Wolfskills were one of the wealthiest and most influential families in California. The beautiful, sensitive girl had a privileged, pampered childhood, followed by a spell at a European "finishing school." Edith was on track to have a happy life of luxury.

Instead, things turned out very differently. Although she had seemed normal during her childhood, by the time Edith returned from Europe, she began behaving oddly. She developed what was described as a "religious mania," which would cause her to suddenly begin praying in public. It drew attention.

It is hard to say just how mentally unbalanced Edith was. Some contemporary newspaper reports described her merely as "eccentric," while others painted her as "the mad heiress" who proclaimed herself to be "Empress of the World." All that can be said for certain is that by 1903, her family believed it was necessary to have her committed to San Francisco's California General Hospital.

It was during her confinement that Edith demonstrated a new specialty: disappearing. On the night of August 27, Wolfskill vanished from her hospital room. Two days later, a detective hired by the young woman's family found Edith at the bottom of a ravine in Colma, then a rugged, sparsely populated area, praying fervently. She was heavily scratched by brambles and exhausted by her wanderings, but was otherwise unharmed.

Edith resented being found, and fought her would-be rescuer. The detective had a very hard time forcing her into his carriage, and upon her return to San Francisco, she lapsed into an angry silence, refusing to speak to anyone. Edith remained at California General for some years, until she was transferred to a hospital in Los Angeles to be nearer her parents.

As time went on, Edith's peculiarities only increased. Her family accepted that she would never be capable of living on her own, and had her declared legally incompetent. After her parents died, Edith's brothers, Matthew and Ney, were given "joint custody" of their sister. They were required to use a portion of the family estate to care for Edith for the rest of her days. The brothers placed her in a ranch the Wolfskills owned in Solano county. As Matthew and Ney had been locked in a bitter feud for some years, they were never at the ranch at the same time. Instead, they took turns living with Edith, carefully scheduling their visits so they would never run into each other. The brothers allowed no outside visitors, aside from staff and the occasional workman.

Edith's lonely, reclusive existence went on quietly enough until July 1929, when Matthew Wolfskill, for reasons unrecorded, fired her nurse, Bessie Ritchards. Edith was fond of Ritchards, so the nurse's dismissal left her extremely upset. When the new nurse, Mary Conklin, arrived on July 13, she received a less than friendly welcome. The only two people at the ranch were Edith and Nelda Wolfskill, the wife of Edith's nephew. Edith refused to even speak to Conklin, and the nurse saw immediately that she was in an agitated and unhappy mood. Within a few hours of Conklin's arrival, Edith was suddenly nowhere to be found. It was not uncommon for her to take long solitary walks among the hills, so at first it was believed there was no cause for alarm. However, when she failed to appear after several hours, Ney, who had by then arrived at the ranch, feared she had gotten lost or suffered some accident. When a search of the area failed to find any sign of Edith, the police were called in.

It did not take long for the Sheriff to come to more sinister conclusions about Edith's disappearance. Conklin told him that shortly before Edith vanished, the nurse overheard her talking to some unknown figure. All Conklin could make out was Edith stating angrily, "I will not leave. This is my home." This led the Sheriff, John Thornton, to believe the heiress had not, as Ney was insisting, merely wandered off somewhere: rather, she had been kidnapped.

The investigation into Edith's whereabouts uncovered some details that made her disappearance even more ominous. Matthew and Ney Wolfskill had been at war over the use of the money their parents had set aside for Edith's care. This led the bank that managed Edith's estate to hire a private detective to investigate the brothers. After questioning Matthew and Ney, this detective told a reporter, "I would like to believe Miss Wolfskill wandered off and is lost. I can't believe that in view of what I discovered." (What he "discovered" was, unfortunately, never made public.) Police suspicion grew that at least one of the brothers knew more about Edith's vanishing act than they were admitting.

Meanwhile, the mysterious disappearance of a very rich and very troubled woman--with dark hints of familial foul play thrown in--generated newspaper headlines across the country. As always happens with high-profile missing persons cases, a swarm of reported "sightings" of Edith Wolfskill popped up in the press. None of them proved to be valid.

It turned out that, whatever the circumstances of Edith's disappearance may have been, the missing woman stayed close to her home. On July 20, searchers found a set of what were believed to be her footprints in a muddy creek bed some five miles from the ranch. The prints crossed over a set of tire marks left by a truck which had passed that way just the day before. This indicated that Edith was apparently still alive, still wandering somewhere in the hills.

The search of the area was intensified, but no further trace of Edith or her movements could be found. Her whereabouts remained utterly unknown until September 19. 18-year-old Bernard Glashoff was walking through a dry creek bed about a mile from the Wolfskill ranch when he came upon a gruesome sight: a badly decomposed corpse. Although the long hair indicated it was of a female, the body was wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of men's overalls. A pair of women's shoes, in pristine condition, were neatly placed near the body.

It was soon determined that Glashoff had found what little remained of Edith Wolfskill.

The grim discovery only intensified the mystery. For openers, why was she wearing these overalls, which had apparently belonged to a local man who had worked on the property several months earlier? Those who had known Edith were adamant that she had a phobia about even touching other people's clothing. (The dress she had allegedly been wearing the day she vanished was found hanging in her closet, which just served to strengthen law enforcement's belief that Edith's family was not being entirely honest with them.) The area where her body was found had been frequently searched by hundreds of people and several tracking dogs. How had she remained hidden?

The unscuffed shoes found by the corpse also had police raising their eyebrows. The autopsy was unable to determine how Edith had died, but it indicated that she had been alive for at least a week after she vanished. If such was the case, how had her shoes stayed so clean after she had presumably spent days rambling the hills?

"Philadelphia Inquirer," October 27, 1929

Meanwhile, Matthew and Ney seemed less interested in their sister's peculiar demise than they were in her money. Their father's will had stipulated that if Edith predeceased her brothers, her $750,000 estate would be equally split between them. Before Edith's body was even discovered, the brothers had launched legal battles over how, exactly, her money should be divided. A sad sequel what had been the very sad life of Edith Wolfskill.

The many questions lingering around the end of the "mad heiress" seem destined to remain unanswered. Sheriff Thornton remained convinced that Edith had been abducted, held captive in some remote cabin, and murdered when she refused to sign a ransom note, but he was never able to prove it. Her disappearance and death have remained, in the words of the "San Francisco Chronicle," "one of the most baffling cases in Northern California."

The Lost Boy: The Mystery of Melvin Horst

Melvin Horst

America's most famous child kidnapping case is the 1932 disappearance of the Lindbergh baby. The notoriety of this still-enigmatic crime overshadows the fact that just four years previously, another little boy vanished in an equally strange and sinister manner. This earlier case, like the hunt for Charles Lindbergh Jr., had many weird twists and turns that for some time held the nation spellbound over the fate of the child victim.

Before there was "baby Charlie," there was little Melvin.

It was two days after Christmas 1928 in Orrville, Ohio. The Horst family still had the tree and holiday decorations filling their living room, and the presents received by their three small children were scattered throughout the house. The Horsts were of modest means, but the household was a happy and comfortable one. They were an average family, living in an average town, living average lives.

On the afternoon of December 27, four-year-old Melvin Horst left his home to play with two friends in the local school yard. He carried with him a red toy truck he had received as a Christmas present. When it began to grow dark, a little after five o'clock, Melvin's friends went home to get dinner, leaving him to walk home alone. He only had to travel a little over a block, through a one-thousand-foot alleyway.

Dinnertime at the Horst household was 5:30. When Melvin failed to arrive for the meal, his parents, Zorah and Raymond, immediately began to worry. He had never been late for dinner before. All they found of their son was his little toy truck, lying on their front yard. When two hours of searching failed to find any sign of the boy, the Horsts contacted the city marshal Roy Horst, who happened to be the child's uncle. A massive hunt was launched, with authorities in the surrounding communities contacted. The local radio station broadcast a description of the missing boy. For all that night and the following day, hundreds of volunteers combed every square inch of Orrville, including wells, cisterns, and even the ice-covered pond at the edge of town. It was one of the largest manhunts in the county's history. And it came up with exactly nothing. Somehow, within just yards from his home, little Melvin and suddenly and completely vanished.

The Horsts believed someone must have kidnapped the boy, but police were more skeptical. It was no secret that the family did not have the money to pay off ransom demands. The Horsts were quiet, respectable people, with no enemies. What reason would anyone have to abduct the child?

Well, there was one obvious reason, and the authorities did pursue it. Police checked out all the known "perverts" in the area. However, all these men--who nowadays would be called "registered sex offenders"--had alibis for the time Melvin disappeared, and a search of their homes found nothing suspicious.

After a few days of fruitless investigation by the local police, two well-known detectives, Ora Slater and John Stevens, were called in to take over the baffling case. Almost immediately, these two men uncovered what was the first possible break in the mystery. An eight-year-old boy named Charles "Junior" Hanna came forward with a startling tale. He claimed that he had been playing with Melvin on the evening of the disappearance. As the boys prepared to go home for dinner, Junior stated that he saw Melvin enter the home of the Arnold family, which happened to back up on the alley where the child was last seen. The Arnolds were related to Junior, and the whole family had a bad reputation in Orrville. In fact, Marshal Horst had arrested a number of Arnolds for various crimes, including bootlegging and robbery. Could simple revenge be behind the mystery?

Via Newspapers.com

Police promptly arrested the Arnolds and Bascom McHenry (an Arnold son-in-law) and charged them with child stealing (which was, under Ohio law, a less serious offense than kidnapping.) Under questioning, the patriarch of the family, Elias Arnold, admitted that he "had it in" for Roy Horst, but he, as well as the rest of the Arnolds, denied having anything to do with Melvin's disappearance.

The prosecutor, Walter Mougey, knew the evidence against the suspects was slight, if not virtually nonexistent, but at the moment, it was all he had. He decided to roll the dice and take the case before a grand jury. His argument was that Elias Arnold and his son Arthur mistakenly believed that little Melvin was the son of Roy Horst, and so they kidnapped the child to get vengeance against the lawman.

The two Arnolds stood trial in March 1929. Their attorney, A.D. Metz, had little trouble making short work of the feeble case against his clients. Metz declared that the detectives framed the Arnolds so they could collect the reward money. He also blasted the prosecution for not allowing him to interview Junior Hanna, even though the boy's testimony was the sole evidence implicating the defendants. Metz also produced a witness, Ora Watts, who managed to poke a considerable hole in Junior's story. Young Hanna--in one of the numerous differing versions of his story--claimed that he had seen Arthur Arnold offer Melvin an orange. Horst had dropped the fruit in the Arnold yard when Arthur picked up the boy and carried him into the house. An orange was indeed eventually found on the Arnold property. However, Watts told the jury that he had made a minute search of the Arnold yard two days before this discovery, and he was positive the orange was not there at that time. The implication was that investigators had planted this incriminating evidence in order to corroborate Junior's story. When Elias took the stand he, naturally, denied having any knowledge of what happened to Melvin. He made no secret of the fact that he had a grudge against Roy Horst, but made the not-unreasonable remark, "If I wanted to get even with Marshal Horst, I'd take it out of his skin."

Despite the lack of solid proof against the defendants, the fact that they had no alibi for the evening of Melvin's disappearance, coupled with their generally shady history, obviously told heavily against the Arnolds. After deliberating for only seven hours, the jury found them both guilty. Elias was sentenced to spend twenty years in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Arthur, who was only seventeen, was sent to the Mansfield Reformatory.

The Arnolds vowed to fight the verdict. While their attorneys sought a new trial, the search for little Melvin continued. "For God's sake," Elias told Ora Slater, "find that boy." The publicity given the disappearance brought in the usual crop of "sightings." One witness claimed to have seen Melvin on a train in Columbus, Ohio. Another said that the boy had been hit by a car, with his body thrown into the Scioto River. Others told of seeing the child in a green car which had been seen in the area. Still others suggested that Melvin had been snatched by bootleggers fearful he would "rat" on them. None of these leads went anywhere.

The lawyers for the Arnolds went before the Ninth District Court of Appeals to ask that they be given a new trial. These three appellate judges agreed, on the grounds that Junior Hanna's testimony should not have been admitted in court. In fact, two of the judges advocated that all charges against the Arnolds should be dropped, but this would have required a unanimous decision from the court.

The second trial took place in December 1929. It was essentially identical to the first proceedings. The prosecution claimed that the Arnolds abducted Melvin in order to get their revenge against Roy Horst. The defense argued that the Arnolds had been framed. They also proved that Junior Hanna had changed his story no less than five times. In one statement, Junior said he had seen Arthur carry Melvin into the Arnold home. In another, he said only that he had seen Melvin and Bascom McHenry in one of the windows of the Arnold home. In yet another, Junior stated that he had left for home before Melvin entered the alleyway. Some days, Junior said Bascom and Arthur abducted Melvin. On other days, Arthur and Elias did the dark deed. Which one of Junior's statements was the truth? Were any of them the truth? Junior was also asked why he had waited until four days after Melvin vanished to tell what he had allegedly seen.

"Because nobody asked me," the boy replied.

Naturally, the defense made much of the fact that Junior Hanna's ever-shifting and highly untrustworthy testimony was the sole piece of evidence against the Arnolds, and this time, the jury was sympathetic to their argument. After six hours of deliberation, they returned a verdict of "not guilty."

The next bizarre chapter in the story came when Junior Hanna came up with a fresh new tale: this time, he accused his own father, Charles Hanna, of Melvin's murder. Under intense questioning by the police--which probably included techniques that would be frowned upon by civil libertarians--Hanna Senior signed a confession. His story was that an Akron bootlegger named Tony La Fatch mistakenly believed that Melvin was Roy Horst's child. La Fatch offered a payment of 25 gallons of liquor to anyone who could deliver to him the hated marshal's son, dead or alive. Hanna went on to say that he witnessed a friend of his, Earl Conold, kidnap the child and strangle him to death, after which the child was buried in Hanna's back yard. The infuriated Conold responded by accusing Hanna of the boy's murder. While all this finger-pointing provided a great deal of lurid newspaper copy, the police had a hard time finding any sort of actual evidence that either man had anything to do with Melvin's disappearance. An excavation of Hanna's property found nothing. Before long, Hanna withdrew his confession, stating that he had only signed it to end three days of brutal interrogation, and both men were eventually released from police custody. Once again, an initially promising lead went nowhere.

The hunt for Melvin went on. Investigators spent days sifting through the numerous sightings, local rumors, tips, and, in some cases, outright hoaxes that streamed into the prosecutor's office. The Horst family refused to take down their Christmas tree, insisting that it would remain until Melvin came back home. Zorah Horst vowed that the family would never celebrate another Christmas without him. Melvin's relatives believed that he had been kidnapped by bootleggers who kept the boy alive. In 1943, Roy Horst theorized, "The hijackers caused more of a sensation than they intended, and feared to return the lad...but they wouldn't kill him and get themselves in any deeper...He probably was passed from one bootlegger to another until they lost all idea where he came from...and now he's probably in the army."

The sad, dried up Christmas tree--symbol of a small boy's last holiday--was fated to stand for a very, very long time. Months, then years, went by, without anyone finding the slightest trace of Melvin. In 1940, the governor of Ohio ordered that the investigation be re-opened, but this second inquiry was no more fruitful than the first. Up until his death in 1961, Melvin's father continued the search for his son, pursuing every possible clue he could find, no matter how unlikely.

Nearly a century has gone by, without anyone being able to offer the answer to one very simple question: "What happened to Melvin Charles Horst?"

Woodcock's Wooing: A Case of Mad Love

That peculiar aberration we now call "stalking"--or to use the clinical term, "ertomania," is the wholly unfounded delusion that a particular person is wildly in love with you. Any effort by the victim of this obsession to prove that such is not the case only seems to fuel, not dampen, the ertomaniac's ardor. Persons suffering from this disorder are remarkably creative in inventing reasons why the adored object is merely hiding their true feelings. Ertomania is often alarmingly persistent and untreatable.

Modern-day stories of "celebrity stalkers" cause us to overlook the fact that this is hardly a new form of mental illness. In fact, one of the most notable "stalkers" made life hell for one unfortunate young woman back in the mid 19th century.

When you discover that someone earned the nickname "Woodcock," because it was so difficult for people to shoot him, you surmise that you have come across someone with a novel and striking personality. John Rutter Carden certainly lived up to those expectations. In 1811, Carden was born at his family's Tipperary home, Barnane Castle. After being educated for some years in England, he returned to claim his Irish estates.

A 19th century view of Barnane Castle

He discovered that the properties had sadly declined. During Carden's absence, the tenants on his lands had felt free to stop paying rent, and they saw no reason why they should start now. Carden ordered them to either pay up or leave, but most declined to do either one. War quite literally broke out between the two factions, complete with Carden installing a cannon on the castle roof. (It was during these battles that our hero earned his unusual nom de guerre.)

Happily, a peaceful resolution was eventually reached. His tenants eventually learned that, other than his dismaying predilection for collecting rent, he was a decent enough landlord by the standards of the day. Despite the fact that he was the county's magistrate and deputy-lieutenant--positions of authority that seldom lead to general popularity--he was well-liked by his neighbors. For some years, his life in the Irish countryside jogged along very prosperously and peacefully. Woodcock Carden, in short, seemed like the last man in the world to qualify as Strange Company fodder.

Of course, you never know when people might surprise you.

Although Carden went through his share of love affairs--women generally found him attractive--by the time he entered his forties he was still a bachelor, and evidently felt little need to marry. He liked women, but had yet to love any of them. Then, in July 1852, some friends of his named Bagwell invited him to their estate, Eastwood, in County Cork. This would prove to be a visit that would change the course of his life and win him a curious place in Irish history.

Among the other visitors at Eastwood were a Mrs. George Gough and her two orphaned sisters, Laura and Eleanor Arbuthnot. Eighteen-year-old Eleanor was like a heroine from a Jane Austen novel: Pretty, intelligent, wealthy, charming, warmhearted, and both innocent and spirited. All that was needed was for a Mr. Darcy or Colonel Brandon to fall hopelessly in love with her.

Eleanor Arbuthnot.  (H/t to Twitter's @litrvixen for bringing this portrait--as well as the above image of Carden--to my attention.)

Unfortunately for her, what she got instead was Woodcock. Although neither Eleanor or her family took any particular interest in Carden, he instantly became violently smitten with the girl. Before his visit was over, he begged Mrs. Gough for her young sister's hand in marriage. She issued a prompt and firm refusal. Mrs. Gough pointed out that Eleanor was too young to think of marriage, and in any case, she showed no particular liking for him. She told Carden to just forget about Eleanor and move on.

This was the absolute last thing Carden intended to do. Woodcock had managed to unalterably convince himself that Eleanor was secretly infatuated with him, but maidenly modesty kept her from admitting as much. At first, he saw her family as working to poison her mind against him. This later grew into the conviction that her relatives were holding her prisoner, and Eleanor was desperately waiting for him to rescue her. Carden wrote Eleanor a letter proposing they elope. The shocked--and rather disgusted--girl showed this note to her family. The outraged Goughs sent a response ordering Carden never to communicate with any of them again. Eleanor herself wrote a reply stating that she would never forgive him for this "insulting proposition."

Baffled and embarrassed by the rebuff, Woodcock scarcely knew what to do next. He even considered moving to the West Indies to try to escape his humiliation. Most unfortunately for all concerned, he did no such thing. Instead, his increasingly fixated mind came up with a plan that would, he felt sure, free Eleanor from her family's domination and enable Miss Arbuthnot to finally reveal her hidden passion for him.

He decided there was nothing to be done except kidnap the girl.

In the autumn of 1853, he felt he had finally found his opportunity. While traveling to Scotland to stay with a friend, Lord Hill, who lived on the isle of Skye, fate placed him on the same boat as Eleanor and her family, who were traveling to a ball at Inverness. When he learned of their destination, he immediately changed his own travel plans and followed them to the party, essentially gate-crashing the event. He did not try to speak to Eleanor, but he followed her around and stared at her in a most unnerving fashion.

He decided that Inverness would be the site of Eleanor's "liberation." He intended to grab her away from the Goughs and use relays of horses to take her to the coast of Galway. There, a yacht would be waiting to sail them to Skye, where, so he fondly imagined, Lord Hill would be willing to shelter them.

While waiting to have his newly-acquired yacht fitted out in suitably bridal elegance, Carden occupied his time by making a thorough pest of himself. When Eleanor and her family traveled to Paris, Carden ruined their vacation by trailing their every move. No matter where they went, there was Woodcock, staring and peeping and languishing.

After everyone had returned to Ireland, Carden learned that his scheme would have to be delayed: Eleanor had fallen from a horse, breaking one of her ankles. During her recuperation, Carden frantically nagged mutual acquaintances for updates about her condition. He had gotten it into his head that Eleanor's relatives were preventing her from receiving proper care.

Early in 1854, Carden learned that Eleanor's brother William was going to India, and that Eleanor was going to accompany him for part of the journey. Woodcock saw this as his golden opportunity. Unlike the rest of Eleanor's family, William Arbuthnot had always been friendly to Carden, and Woodcock hoped the young man might be sympathetic to the planned abduction. As it happened, however, by the time William was ready to leave, Eleanor's ankle had not healed, forcing her to remain at home.

Time for Plan B. Carden made one last effort to obtain Eleanor's hand in a conventional fashion. He wrote the Goughs offering to give the family his entire fortune if they would only consent to letting him wed Eleanor. This mad idea was treated with the scorn it deserved, leaving Carden feeling he had no choice but to resort to drastic measures.

All was soon made ready. The yacht was waiting off Galway. Horses had been placed along the road to the coast. Carden had enlisted a small private army--consisting of the strongest, most loyal men on his estate--to assist in the abduction. He had even thought to provide a vial of chloroform, in case Eleanor's nerves were upset by the kidnapping.

On July 2, 1854, Eleanor and her two sisters, along with the family governess, a Miss Lyndon, set off for church, about a mile from their house. Carden quietly followed them. After the service, the women were riding home in their carriage when they noticed that Woodcock was following them on horseback. By this point, the family was so used to him mooning about, that they initially paid little attention to the intrusion.

They soon learned that this time was very different. Several men suddenly leaped into the road, forcing their carriage to stop. The men grabbed the horses' heads, cut the reins, and threatened the carriage driver with their knives. Meanwhile, Carden dismounted and ran to the carriage, intending to pull Eleanor from the vehicle. Miss Lyndon, who happened to be seated near the door, pummeled Carden with her fists until his face was bloody. He yanked her out and threw her to the side of the road. Carden's henchmen, assuming she was the target of the abduction, began pulling Miss Lyndon into the brougham Carden had lying in wait.

Before the governess could be kidnapped--a fiasco that, Carden later said dryly, would have been a "just punishment" for him--men from the Gough estate arrived on the scene and joined in the battle against the attacking party. Carden had almost managed to pry the screaming, struggling Eleanor from her carriage when someone struck him a paralyzing blow to the head. When more of Gough's men appeared, Carden knew the battle was lost, and he ordered his forces to retreat. The would-be kidnappers rode hard for home, with the Gough faction--soon to be joined by the police--in hot pursuit.

The chase lasted for some twenty miles before Carden and his men were overtaken. Although the fugitives put up a fierce fight, they were badly outnumbered, and they soon found themselves in custody. Carden expected to face not just failure, but social ruin and, very possibly, the standard sentence for abduction, which was transportation for life.

Instead, he found himself a public hero. Crowds--largely of women--surrounded his prison to cheer him. His peers among the gentry considered Carden's escapade to be a grand romantic adventure, a jolly bit of wooing that had deserved better success. When he went on trial for abduction, attempted abduction, and felonious assault, it was the social event of the year. All of Irish high society fought for seats in the courtroom. The legal show beat opening night at the opera all hollow.

The dramatic highlight of the spectacle came when Eleanor herself took the stand. Carden had instructed his attorneys not to badger his lady love with any questions, but the defense still managed to get her to reveal a vital legal point: Carden had not succeeded in removing her from the carriage. Carden's lawyers used this to argue that no actual abduction had taken place.

The jury--which shared in the near-universal public adulation of the defendant--readily acquitted him of abduction. They had no choice but to find him guilty of the lesser charge of attempted abduction, earning Carden a sentence of two years hard labor. Jurors also absolved him of assault, a verdict which inspired a prolonged round of cheering among the spectators. Despite a few disapproving comments in the Irish newspapers--one editorial grumbled that Carden "stands more in need of a straight-waistcoat than of a wife"--Woodcock emerged from his trial as the people's idol. The public found Eleanor's antipathy to becoming the wife of this dashing fellow to be quite inexplicable.

Inevitably, having this level of general support did absolutely nothing to cure Carden's near-fatal attraction. He left prison in 1856 as determined as ever to marry Eleanor. He traveled all the way to India, simply to try and enlist William Arbuthnot's help in winning her over, but that young man wisely declined. Carden then petitioned the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who kindly but firmly advised him to find a bride he did not have to kidnap. Although he claimed to be terribly regretful about all the trouble he had brought to Eleanor, he failed to do the one thing that would show true remorse: namely, leave her the hell alone. For years, he would continue to stalk her. Wherever she went, in Ireland, England, Scotland or the Continent, Eleanor would find a silent shadow trailing her movements. Carden rarely tried approaching her; settling for lingering in her general vicinity. Eleanor must have felt like she was being haunted by a ghost, although I'm sure she would have found a spectral stalker far preferable. When he wasn't trailing after Eleanor, Carden lived in solitary splendor at Barnane. He had spent a fortune lavishly redecorating it in anticipation of the day Miss Arbuthnot would come to reign as queen of the castle. Instead, he settled for turning it into an informal hotel. His hospitality became renowned among neighbors and visiting guests--aside from his obsession with Eleanor, he struck everyone as a genial, generous, and gentlemanly character. When he died in 1866, he was greatly missed. To this day in Ireland, you can hear folk ballads celebrating Carden and his "romance."

And then there was Eleanor. Truly a "victim of love" if ever there was one, Eleanor saw her life irretrievably blighted by her unwanted admirer. With the public regarding Carden as the hero of the story, the woman who steadfastly rejected him naturally became the villain. The utterly blameless Eleanor was seen as Carden's ruin, not the other way around. For some time after the trial, she could not appear in public for fear of being hissed at, heckled, or worse. Her reputation--that most prized possession among well-bred Victorian ladies--was permanently ruined by the scandal. She never married. Until her death in 1894, she contented herself with becoming a second mother to her sister Laura's children.

No, life is very seldom fair.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

"The Changeling," Arthur Rackham

Those of you familiar with medieval history are undoubtedly aware of the custom of "proof of age," where people used landmark events as a means of legally establishing the time of their birth.

Well, I dare anyone to top this one. ("Dundee Telegraph," August 12, 1909)

At a meeting of the Limavady Pension Committee an old woman told a fairy tale that proved the credence sometimes attached to the folk-lore of the fireside. Mr J. A. Lang, J.P., occupied the chair. Among the applicants was Annie Mintire, a bent old woman from Faughanvale. Questioned as to her age, she said she did not remember the year, but she had a distinct recollection of being born on Hallowe'en night in 1839, and of having been stolen by the fairies.

The Chairman —"You are quite sure of that?" " I am as certain of it as that I live," emphatically replied the lady. "Fortunately my brother was returning from Carndonagh, and he heard the noise of their singing and their dancing, and he had a book with him, which he threw into the wood at Carrowkeel. The fairies then abandoned me, and my brother lifted me in his arms and brought me back to my mother."

"There was much joy at your return, I presume?" said the Chairman. Applicant said there was great rejoicing over her rescue. Her mother was in ecstasy at getting back her baby, and the people celebrated the event, by feasting, and there was a considerable quantity of drink consumed. The witness was asked if she could think of any other incident that would enable her to fix her age. but the time of her birth and abduction by the wee people were all she had guide her. The Pension Officer said there was no record of her age in either the 1841 or 1851 census. The committee, however, decided to grant the pension.

After that testimonial, I should hope they did.

The Kidnapping of a Champion

While high-profile kidnappings of animals are less frequent than human abductions, they happen more frequently than you might think. Arguably the most famous example is the unsolved disappearance of the magnificent racehorse Shergar.

As a three-year-old in 1981, he won one of the most illustrious races in the world, the Epsom Derby, by 10 lengths--a record winning margin for the event. Later that year, he was named European Horse of the Year, and was retired to stud, where his connections--as well as race fans--earnestly hoped he might duplicate his success on the racetrack in the breeding shed. He was acclaimed as one of the greatest equines of the century.

Shergar was sent to Ballymany Stud farm in his native Ireland. He was not only an intelligent horse, but gentle and good-natured, so he was adjusting well to his new routine. There was no reason to suspect he had anything but a long, placid life ahead of him.

On February 8, 1983, those expectations went horribly, shockingly wrong.

It was a blustery, icy-cold day, so Shergar was kept inside his heated stable for most of the day. After a brief run in his paddock, the horse's 58-year-old "stable boy," Jim Fitzgerald, brought Shergar back to his shed and returned to his house on the farm's grounds, locking the main door of the stable behind him, as always. All was quiet.

No one was around to see a strange car enter Ballymany's main gate, which had been left unguarded on this wickedly cold, foggy, snowy night. Fitzgerald was completely unprepared when he heard a knock on his door. His son, Bernard, opened the door. A masked stranger asked him, "Is the boss in?" Then, without warning, the intruder delivered a blow to the young man's head that left him flat on the floor. Fitzgerald rushed into the room, only to see the man pointing a pistol at him.

Other masked men--Fitzgerald later thought it was eight or so of them--suddenly entered the house, as well. The gunman told him, "We've come for Shergar, and we want £2m for him. Call the police and he's dead."

Fitzgerald was led at gunpoint to Shergar's stable. They forced him to put tack on the horse, and they led the unsuspecting animal to their waiting truck, and drove off with him.  Some of the kidnappers stayed behind, where they trained guns at Fitzgerald's family for several hours. Fitzgerald was shoved into a second vehicle and driven around for three hours before being tossed out on to the road, with a warning not to call police.

The hunt for the prized stallion began with a bizarre game of "Telephone." Fitzgerald reported the crime, not to the police, but to the stud farm's manager, Ghislain Drion. Drion then called Shergar's vet. The vet called a friend, who in his turn called the Irish Finance Minister. This official then contacted the Minister for Justice. It was not until eight hours after Shergar was taken away that anyone thought to inform law enforcement that they had a particularly weird abduction on their hands.

The crime seemed a complete mystery. No one had any clues who had committed this unprecedented and peculiarly revolting crime, let alone any indication of where Shergar could be. People claiming to be the kidnappers eventually contacted several racing journalists, as well as one of the horse's owners, the Aga Khan, to relay their ransom demands. These moves toward negotiation came to nothing. The horse's syndicate never had any intention of paying a dime, reasoning that if they had given in to the criminals' demands, no valuable racehorse in the world would be safe. The BBC and the Irish racehorse trainer Jeremy Maxwell also received anonymous phone calls claiming that Shergar had suffered an "accident" which required him to be euthanized, but authorities suspected the calls were a sick hoax.  After four days, the alleged kidnappers simply stopped calling. And no one for certain has ever seen Shergar--alive or dead--since.

The kidnapping remained an utterly cold case until 1992, when an imprisoned Irish Republican Army leader-turned-informer, Sean O'Callaghan, told the world what had happened to Shergar.

According to O'Callaghan, another IRA member, Kevin Mallon, was given the job of stealing the horse. The plan was merely to hold Shergar for a great deal of money to pay for arms and other expenses. After the ransom was paid, the horse would be returned.

The plan quickly proved disastrous. O'Callaghan said Mallon told him that Shergar, in unfamiliar surroundings and in the hands of inept thugs, became so hysterical that his kidnappers were unable to handle him. In a panic--and quite scared of this huge, dangerously high-strung creature--the terrorists lost their heads completely and machine-gunned their frenzied captive. According to O'Callaghan, this pampered, noble animal died a particularly slow, agonizing death.

The story goes that the IRA gang dug a large pit in the remote mountains near Ballinamore, about a hundred miles from Ballymany. Then, Shergar's corpse was dumped in this hasty, unmarked grave.

This depressing story is considered the most probable explanation for Shergar's disappearance, but it has never been proven. For what it's worth, the IRA has never claimed responsibility for the theft, and O'Callaghan, like many professional rats, has shown himself to be chronically unreliable.

For years after Shergar vanished, there were numerous "sightings" of him reported all over the world. To this day, there are still racetrack folk who say that his kidnappers, once they realized the impossibility of collecting a ransom, merely turned him out to live "incognito" at some private farm or another.

One would certainly like to think this is what happened.

Whatever Shergar's fate may have been, his kidnapping was one of those crimes as utterly pointless as it was cruel. The thieves themselves--whoever they were--never profited from their crime. The companies who had insured the horse refused to pay Shergar's owners, on the grounds that it was never established that the champion was dead. Only those few members of the 34-member syndicate who insured him against theft received any compensation--about $10.6 million, according to Lloyd's.

When talking to a writer for the "Daily Telegraph" in 2008, Jim Fitzgerald still became teary-eyed when remembering the horse he had known and loved so well. "Shergar was a grand horse," he said. "He deserved better."

That is all anyone can say with any certainty about the matter.

The Case of the Kidnapped Corpse [Part Two]

Joseph Werner, "Four Grave Robbers Awaken a Ghost"

In December 1880, Alexander Lindsay, the 25th Earl of Crawford, died while on a visit to Florence, Italy.  His body was carefully embalmed, packed in a complicated array of coffins, and reverently shipped back to his home in Scotland.  By the end of that month, his remains were buried in his family vault at Dunecht House, near Aberdeen. The crypt was accessible only through a short flight of steps. After the burial, the stairway was covered by four huge slabs of granite, which were then covered in lime. A few months later, the slabs were covered with dirt, which was brightened by the addition of grass and flowers. The whole was then surrounded by an iron railing. His loved ones could be pardoned for thinking the late Earl was well and truly buried.

Life at Dunecht went on placidly until five months after the burial, when the housekeeper, who happened to be passing by the crypt, noticed a strong, but pleasant smell coming from the burial chamber. The next day, the scent was also perceived by a gardener. Curiosity about the mysterious fragrance became so intense that orders were given to examine the slabs that had been placed over the vault. A crevice between two of the slabs was noted, but the assumption was that it had been caused by recent frosts. This crack was filled with lime, cement was placed over the stones, and everyone soon forgot the matter.

Our little story would now be over, if not for an anonymous letter sent several months later to the Lindsay family solicitor, William Yeats. It read:

"Sir--The remains of the late Earl of Crawford are not beneath the chapel at Dunecht as you believe, but were removed hence last spring, and the smell of decayed flowers ascending from the vault since that time will, on investigation, be found to proceed from another cause than flowers." The note was signed, "Nabob."

Yeats immediately contacted the builder who had constructed the burial vault. On learning from him about the apparently impregnable character of the Earl's resting place, the solicitor assumed the letter was merely a sick hoax. He dismissed the incident from his mind, saying nothing about it to the Lindsay family.

Some three months later, a workman at Dunecht House was passing by the vault. He noticed that the turf around the entrance to the burial site was displaced. Police were called in to examine the crypt.

They found that the earth around the granite slab directly above the stairway had been removed. The stone itself had been propped up by about a foot and a half. And when the search party descended into the vault itself, they were horrified to find that the coffin containing the Earl's remains had been forced open. The body itself was gone. The aromatic smell noticed earlier had come from scented sawdust that had been used to fill the coffin.

Naturally, a criminal investigation was immediately launched. Everyone connected with the estate was closely questioned by police, and the grounds surrounding Dunecht were searched. No clue to the Earl's current whereabouts--not to mention the identity of the thieves--could be found.

Weeks passed without any progress in solving the crime. A £600 reward was offered for any information about the theft. William Yeats, finally realizing that the anonymous letter he had received was all too legitimate, placed an ad in the local papers asking "Nabob" to communicate with him. These efforts received no replies.

Late in December, authorities received their first possible break in the case. "Nabob" sent a letter to a Mr. Alsop, the late Earl's London solicitor:

"The body is still in Aberdeenshire, and I can put you in possession of the same as soon as you bring one or more of the desperadoes who stole it to justice, so that I may know with whom I have to deal. I have no wish to be assinated by rusarectionests nor suspected by the public of being an accomplice in such dastardly work, which I most assuredly would be unless the gulty party are brought to justice. Had Mr. Yeats acted on the hint I gave him last Sept., he might have found the remains as though by axedand [accident] and hunted up the robers at lsure, [leisure] but that chance is lost, so I hope you will find your men and make it safe and prudent for me to find what you want.

P.S.--Should they find thad an outsider knows their secret it may be removed to another place."

The case remained stalled until July 1882, when a man named Charles Soutar was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the theft. Some years earlier, Souter had worked as a rat-catcher at Dunecht House, but due to his illegal side-job as a poacher, he had been fired three years before the Earl's death. Under interrogation, he admitted writing the "Nabob" letters. When asked to say what he knew of the crime, he told a gloriously deranged story.

Soutar claimed that one night in the spring of 1881, he was poaching in the woods around Dunecht. On hearing noises, he assumed they were caused by keepers, so he fled. Soon, however, someone tripped him and threw him to the ground. Two strangers with guns held him down. They were joined by two more men. They menacingly asked Soutar what he was doing there. He replied that he was merely "looking for a beast." One of the men, who appeared to be the leader of the group, told him that if he had been a spy, they would have had to kill him. The man added, "Remember what I am going to tell you; you're known to our party, and if you breathe a syllable of what you have seen, I will have your life if you're on the face of the earth." They then released Soutar and ordered him to leave the wood.

At daybreak, the poacher returned to the spot where he had encountered the men. They had gone, but left behind "a heap of rubbish where they had concealed something." When he examined the pile, he found a dead body, which emitted a strange odor. Soutar thought it best to just cover the corpse up again and forget the whole thing.

Some weeks later, he found himself in conversation with a man named James Cowe, who had done some plastering work at Dunecht. Cowe mentioned how the Earl's burial vault had been closed up, due to the strange, sweet smell coming from it. Soutar realized that the description of this smell matched the scent he had noticed on the body in the woods, and so was able to put two and two together about the fate of the Earl's corpse.

Soutar demurred at the suggestion that he lead police to the site, explaining, "I'll rather wait until you get them that took the body; it will be safer for me then."

An intensive search was conducted around the woods surrounding Dunecht. Iron probes were used to find anything that might resemble a burial site. Finally, on July 18th, the probes found a patch of ground about five hundred yards from Dunecht House that looked promising. The place was dug up, and their efforts were rewarded when they uncovered the Earl, wrapped in a blanket. The face was still recognizable. The remains were eventually reburied in Wigan, at the Lindsay Chapel, and the Earl was finally left to continue his rudely interrupted eternal slumber.

Soutar continued to insist his innocence, but, as the authorities lacked any other suspects, he found himself on trial for grave-robbing. A number of witnesses testified to having seen the defendant in the neighborhood of Dunecht late in May 1881--just a couple of days before the sweet odor began to emanate from the vault. James Cowe asserted that he had never had any conversation with Soutar about the Earl's crypt or the strange odor. Others related how Soutar had made a number of enigmatic comments to the effect that he knew where the missing Earl's body was hidden. The prosecution suggested that Soutar had written the "Nabob" letters in the hope of collecting a reward for his information.

Soutar's lawyers made the somewhat backhanded defense that his presence in the Dunecht area in May 1881 was easily explained--after all, he was a poacher. He did not travel in any secrecy, as he surely would have done if he had been planning to expand his activities to grave-robbing. For all anyone knew, the odor from the vault could have begun weeks before it was first detected. If he was guilty, it made no sense that in the "Nabob" letters he would make the conditions that the perpetrators be caught and he himself protected, as he knew the ads specifically rejected the idea of offering immunity to anyone involved in the crime. The defendant's story of finding the body may have been extremely weird, but it was one he had stuck to consistently, and nothing had been found to refute it. In short, the prosecution had presented no proof that Soutar had been responsible for the crime.

The jurors disagreed with that statement. After deliberating only half-an-hour, they found Soutar guilty. The judge commented that the "peculiar heinousness" of the crime deserved a punishment greater than that given to the "normal" body-snatcher who stole for the purposes of anatomical dissection. (A curious bit of judicial snobbery.) He sentenced the prisoner to five years in jail.

Although there was a legal "solution" to the crime, it still ended on a very unsatisfactory note. Even if Soutar had been involved in kidnapping the Earl's corpse--which was by no means proved beyond a shadow of a doubt--it was acknowledged by nearly all observers that he must have had accomplices. No one else was ever charged, or even suspected, of the deed. Whether Souter's conviction was justified or not, somebody got away with some very bad behavior.

As William Roughead noted in his essay on the Dunecht Mystery, such cases present "a strong argument in favor of cremation."

[Note:  By coincidence, I recently came across this curious--although most likely hoaxing--epilogue to our story.]