MYSTERIES OF THE
MISSING
[Illustration: ~~ SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS ~~
The Ross house, Washington Lane, Germantown, Pa.
_From a sketch by W. P. Snyder_]
MYSTERIES OF THE
MISSING
_By_
EDWARD H. SMITH
_Author of “Famous Poison Mysteries,” etc._
[Illustration]
LINCOLN MAC VEAGH
THE DIAL PRESS
NEW YORK · MCMXXVII
Copyright, 1924, by
STREET AND SMITH CORPORATION
Copyright, 1927, by
THE DIAL PRESS, INC.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
To
JOSEPH A. FAUROT
A GREAT FINDER OF WANTED MEN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING xi
I. THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA 1
II. “SEVERED FROM THE RACE” 23
III. THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE 40
IV. THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY 65
V. THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE 82
VI. THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK 101
VII. DOROTHY ARNOLD 120
VIII. EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE 133
IX. THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING 153
X. THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE 171
XI. A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE 187
XII. THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS 203
XIII. THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA 219
XIV. THE LOST MILLIONAIRE 237
XV. THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY 257
XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY 273
XVII. SPECTRAL SHIPS 292
BIBLIOGRAPHY 313
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
CHARLIE ROSS 10
THEODOSIA BURR 32
MILLIE STÜBEL 44
ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR 56
ARTHUR ORTON 94
MARION CLARKE 110
DOROTHY ARNOLD 126
PAT CROWE 146
JIMMIE GLASS 204
JOE VAROTTA 220
AMBROSE J. SMALL 240
AMBROSE BIERCE 260
DOCTOR ANDRÉE 280
_U. S. S. CYCLOPS_ 304
_And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,
His day’s work and his night’s work are undone;
And lo, between the nightfall and the light,
He is not, and none knoweth of such an one._
--_Laus Veneris._
A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING
“... but whosoever of them ate the lotus’ honeyed fruit wished to
bring tidings back no more and never to leave the place; there with
the lotus eaters they desired to stay, to feed on lotus and forget the
homeward way.”
THE ODYSSEY, Book IX.
The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strand and the Sirens from their
Campanian isle, but still the sons of men go forth to strangeness and
forgetfulness. What fruit or song it is that calls them out and binds
them in absence, we must try to read from their history, their psyche
and the chemistry of their wandering souls. Some urgent whip of that
divine vice, our curiosity, drives us to the exploration and will
not relent until we discover whether they have been devoured by the
Polyphemus of crime, bestialized by some profane Circe or simply made
drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness.
The unreturning adventurer--the man whose destiny is hid in doubt--has
tormented the imagination in every century. In life the lost comrade
wakes a more poignant curiosity than the returning Odysseus. What of
the true Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas the Etruscans
slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attila die of apoplexy in the
arms of Hilda or shall we believe the elder Eddas, the Nibelungen
and Volsunga sagas or the Teutonic legends of later times? Was it
the genuine Dmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and what of the
two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became of Dandhu Panth after he fled
into Nepal in 1859; did he perish soon or is there truth in the tale
of the finger burial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who died at
Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siege of the barn at
Bloomfield?
These enigmas are more lasting and irritating than any other minor
facet of history, and the patient searching of scholars seems but to
add to the popular confusion and to the charm of our doubts. Even where
research seems to arrive at positive results, the general will cling
to their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is always sweeter than a
sordid fact.
Even in the modern world, so closely organized, so completely explored
and so prodigiously policed, those enigmas continue to pile up. In
our day it is an axiom that nothing is harder to lose sight of than
a ship at sea or a man on land. This sounds, at first blush, like a
paradox. It ought, surely, to be easy to scrape the name from a vessel,
change her gear and peculiarities a little, paint a fresh word upon
her side and so conceal her. Simpler still, why can’t any man, not too
conspicuous or individual, step out of the crowd, alter the cut of
his hair and clothes, assume another name and immediately be draped
in a fresh ego? Does it not take a huge annual expenditure for ship
registry and all sorts of marine policing on the one side, and an even
greater sum for the land police, on the other, to prevent such things?
Truly enough, and it is the police power of the earth, backed by
certain plain or obscure motivations in mankind, that makes it next to
impossible for a ship or a man to drop out of sight, as the phrase goes.
Leaving aside the ships, which are a small part of our argument, we
may note that, for all the difficulty, thousands of human beings try
to vanish every year. Plainly there are many circumstances, many
crises in the lives of men, women and children, that make a complete
detachment and forgottenness desirable, nay, imperative. Yet, of the
twenty-five thousand persons reported missing to the police of the
City of New York every year, to take an instance, only a few remain
permanently undiscovered. Most are mere stayouts or young runaways
and are returned to their inquiring relatives within a few hours or
days. Others are deserting spouses--husbands who have wearied or wives
who have found new loves. These sometimes lead long chases before
they are reported and identified, at which time the police have no
more to do with the matter unless there is action from the domestic
courts. A number are suicides, whose bodies soon or late rise from the
city-engirdling waters and are, almost without fail, identified by the
marvelously efficient police detectives in charge of the morgues. Some
are pretended amnesics and a few are true ones. But in the end the
police of the cities clear up nearly all these cases. For instance, in
the year 1924, the New York police department had on its books only one
male and one female uncleared case originating in the year of 1918,
or six years earlier. At the same time there were four male and six
female cases dating from 1919, three male and one female cases that
had originated in 1920, no male and three female cases that originated
in 1921, three male and two female cases of the date of 1922, but in
1924 there were still pending, as the police say, twenty-eight male and
sixty-three female cases of the year preceding, 1923.
The point here is that only one man and one woman could stay hid from
the searching eyes of the law as long as six years. Evidently the
business of vanishing presents some formidable difficulties.
However, it is not even these solitary absentees that engage our
interest most sharply, for usually we know why they went and have
some indication that they are alive and merely skulking. There is
another and far rarer genus of the family of the missing, however,
that does strike hard upon that explosive chemical of human curiosity.
Here we have those few and detached inexplicable affairs that neither
astuteness nor diligence, time nor patience, frenzy nor faith can
penetrate--the true romances, the genuine mysteries of vanishment.
A man goes forth to his habitual labor and between hours he is gone
from all that knew him, all that was familiar. There is a gap in the
environment and many lives are affected, nearly or remotely. No one
knows the why or where or how of his going and all the power of men
and materials is hopelessly expended. Years pass and these tales of
puzzlement become legends. They are then things to brood about before
the fire, when the moving mind is touched by the inner mysteriousness
of life.
Again, there are those strange instances of the theft of human beings
by human beings--kidnappings, in the usual term. Nothing except a
natural cataclysm is so excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion
that there are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the
public temper may result from such crimes will be seen from some of
what follows. The most celebrated instance is, of course, the affair
of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia, which carries us back more than half
a century. We have here the classic American kidnapping case, already
a tradition, rich in all the elements that make the perfect abduction
tale.
This terror of the thief of children is, to be sure, as old as the
races. From the Phoenicians who stole babes to feed to their bloody
divinities, the Minoans who raped the youth of Greece for their
bull-fights, and the priests of many lands who demanded maidens to
satisfy the wrath of their gods and the lust of their flesh, down
to the European Gypsies, who sometimes steal, or are said to steal,
children for bridal gifts, we have this dread vein running through
the body of our history. We need, accordingly, no going back into our
phylogeny or biology, to understand the frenzy of the mother when the
shadow of the kidnapper passes over her cote. The women of Normandy are
said still to whisper with trembling the name of Gilles de Rais (or
Retz), that bold marshal of France and comrade in arms of Jeanne d’Arc,
who seems to have been a stealer and killer of children, instead of
the original of Perrault’s Bluebeard, as many believe. What terror
other kidnappers have sent into the hearts of parents will be seen from
the text.
This volume is not intended as a handbook of mysteries, for such
works exist in numbers. The author has limited himself to problems
of disappearance and cases of kidnapping, thereby excluding many
twice-told wonders--the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman,
Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’s _Femme sans nom_, the
changeling of Louis Philippe and the Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair
at Mayerling.
Neither have I attempted any technical exploration of the conduct and
motives of vanishers and kidnappers. It must be sufficiently clear
that a man unpursued who flees and hides is out of tune with his
environment, ill adjusted, nervously unwell. Nor need we accent again
the fact that all criminals, kidnappers included, are creatures of
disease or defect.
A general bibliography will be found at the end of the book. The
information to be had from these volumes has been liberally supported
and amplified from the files of contemporary newspapers in the
countries and cities where these dramas of doubt were played. The
records of legal trials have been consulted in instances where trials
took place and I have talked with the accessible officials having
knowledge of the cases or persons here treated.
E. H. S.
New York, August, 1927.
MYSTERIES OF THE
MISSING
I
THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA
Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of June, 1874, two men in
a shabby-covered buggy stopped their horse under the venerable elms
of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepy suburb of Philadelphia,
with its grave-faced revolutionary houses and its air of lavendered
maturity. All about these intruders was historic ground. Near at
hand was the Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washington and his
tattered command in their famous encounter. Yonder stood the old Morris
Mansion, where the British commander stood cursing the fog, while his
troops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuous Agnew
fell before a backwoods rifleman, and there Mad Anthony Wayne was
forced to decamp by the fire of his confused left. Not far away the
first American Bible had been printed, and that ruinous house on the
ridge had once been the American Capitol. The whole region was a hive
of memories.
Strangely enough, the men in the buggy gave no sign of interest in all
these things. Instead, they devoted their attention to the two young
sons of a grocer who happened to be playing among the bushes on their
father’s property. The children were gradually attracted to confidence
by the strangers, who offered them sweets and asked them who they were,
where their parents were staying, how old they might be, and how they
might like to go riding.
The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary, tried to respond
manfully, as his parents had taught him. He said that he was Walter
Ross, and that his companion was his brother, Charlie, aged four. His
mother, he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her older daughters,
and his father was busy at the store in the business section of the
settlement. Yes, that big, white house on the knoll behind them was
where they lived. All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled
off to his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into their buggy he
demurred. The men got pieces of candy from their pockets, filled the
hands of both children, and drove away.
When the father of the boys came home a little later, he found his
sons busy with their candy, and he was told where they had got it. He
smiled and felt that the two men in the buggy must be very fond of
children. Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmless
incident of that forgotten summer afternoon was the prelude to the most
famous of American abduction cases and the introduction to one of the
abiding mysteries of disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftness
came soon to be a matter of almost worldwide notoriousness--a case of
kidnapping that stands firm in popular memory after the confusions of
fifty-odd years.
On the afternoon of July 1, the strangers came again. This time they
had no difficulty in getting the children into their wagon.[1] Saying
that they were going to buy fire crackers for the approaching Fourth
of July, they carried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and
Richmond Streets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross was given a silver
quarter and told to go into a shop and buy what he wanted. At the
end of five or ten minutes the boy emerged to find his brother, his
benefactors and their buggy gone.
[1] Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial,
the following year, that he had seen the men twice before, but this
seems unlikely.
Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from his home in the toils
of a strange city, stood on the curb and gave childish vent to his
feelings. The sight of the boy with his hands full of fireworks and
his eyes full of tears, soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peacock
finally took charge of the youngster and got from him the name and
address of his father. At about eight o’clock that evening he arrived
at the Ross dwelling and delivered the child, to find that the younger
boy had not been brought home, and that the father was out visiting the
police stations in quest of his sons.
In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnapping was not
immediately conceived, and it even got a hostile reception when the
circumstances forced its entertainment. The father of the missing
Charlie was Christian K. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was
popularly supposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of a
prosperous business at Third and Market streets, and master of a
competence. His flourishing trade, the big house in which he lived
with his wife and seven children, and the fine grounds about his home
naturally caused many to believe that he was a man of large means. In
view of these facts alone the theory of abduction should have been
considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recited the details of his
adventure with the men in a faithful and detailed way, telling enough
about the talk and manner of the men to indicate criminal intent.
Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit of the strangers.
Finally, the manœuver of deserting the older boy and disappearing with
his brother should have been sufficiently suggestive for the most
lethargic policeman. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took the
skeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselves in the
following advertisement, which I take from the _Philadelphia Ledger_ of
July 3:
“Lost, on July 1st, a small boy, about four years of age, light
complexion, and light curly hair. A suitable reward will be paid
on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, corner of Fifth and
Chestnut streets.”
The advertisement was worded in this fashion to conceal the fact of the
child’s vanishment from his mother, who was not called from her summer
resort until some days later.
The police were, however, not long allowed to rest on their comfortable
assumption that the boy had been lost. On the fifth, Mr. Ross received
a letter which had been dated and posted on the day before in
Philadelphia. It stated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the
writer, that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look for
him through the police, and that the father would hear more in a few
days. The note was scrawled by some one who was trying to conceal his
natural handwriting and any literate attainments he may have possessed.
Punctuation and capitals were almost absent, and the commonest words
were so crazily misspelled as to betray purposiveness. The unfortunate
father was addressed as “Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was
later contracted to “Ros.” This missive and some of those that followed
were signed “John.”
Even this communication did not mean much to the police, though they
had not, at that early stage of the mystery, the troublesome flood of
crank letters to plead as an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter
of fact, this first letter came before there had been anything but the
briefest and most conservative announcements in the newspapers, and it
should have been apparent to any one that there was nothing fraudulent
about it. Yet the police officials dawdled. A second message from the
mysterious John wakened them at last to action.
On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longer communication,
unquestionably from the writer of the first, in which he was told that
his appeal to the detectives would be vain. He must meet the terms of
the ransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be the murderer of
his own child. The writer declared that no power in the universe would
discover the boy, or restore him to his father, without payment of the
money, and he added that if the father sent detectives too near the
hiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing the doom of his
son. The letter closed with most terrifying threats. The kidnappers
were frankly out to get money, and they would have it, either from
Ross or from others. If he failed to yield, his child would be slain
as an example to others, so that they would act more wisely when their
children were taken. Ross would see his child either alive or dead. If
he paid, the boy would be brought back alive; if not, his father would
behold his corpse. Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified
by the insertion of these words into the _Ledger_: “Ros, we be willing
to negotiate.”
Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the Charlie Ross terror burst
upon Philadelphia and surrounding communities the following morning in
full virulence. The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-going
road, searched the trains and boats, went through all the craft lying
in the rivers, spread the dragnet for all the known criminals in town
and immediately began a house-to-house search, an almost unprecedented
proceeding in a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatory with
every fresh edition. At once the mad pack of anonymous letter writers
took up the cry, writing to the police and to the unfortunate parents,
who were forced to read with an anxious eye whatever came to their
door, a most insulting and disheartening array of fulminations which
caused the collapse of the already overburdened mother.
In the fever which attacked the city any child was likely to be
seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent, to the nearest police
station, there to answer the suspicion of being Charlie Ross. Mothers
with golden-haired boys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted
to Christian Ross in an unending stream, demanding that he give them
written attestation of the fact that their children were not his, and
the poor beladen man actually wrote hundreds of such testimonials. The
madness of the public went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice the
age and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged before the officials by
unbalanced busybodies. Little boys with black hair were apprehended
by the score at the demand of citizens who pleaded that they might be
the missing boy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were brought
before the scornful police, and some of the self-appointed seekers for
the missing boy had to be driven from the station houses with threats
and blows.
Following the command of the child snatchers with literal fidelity,
Mr. Ross had published in the _Ledger_ the words I have quoted. The
result was a third epistle from the robbers. It recognized his reply,
but made no definite proposition and gave no further orders, save the
command that he reply in the _Ledger_, stating whether or not he was
ready to pay the twenty thousand dollars. On the other hand, the letter
continued the ferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughed
at the police efforts as “children’s play,” and asked whether “Ros”
cared more for money or his son. In this letter was the same labored
effort to appear densely unlettered. One new note was added. The writer
asked whether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousand pounds for
the ransom of yu child.” Either the writer was, or wanted to seem, a
Briton, used to speaking of money in British terms. This pretension was
continued in some of the later letters and led eventually to a search
for the missing boy in England.
In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Ross relied absolutely
on the police and put himself into their hands. He asked how he was
to reply to the third letter and was told that he should pretend to
acquiesce in the demand of the abductors, meantime actually holding
them off and relying on the detectives to find the boy. But this
subterfuge was quickly recognized by the abductors, with the result
that a warning letter came to Mr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was
told that he was pursuing the course of folly, that the detectives
could not help him, and that he must choose at once between his money
and the life of his child.
Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors to yield to the demands
of the extortioners, and several men of means offered him loans or
gifts of such funds as he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he
signified his intention of arriving at a bargain, and the mysterious
John wrote him two or three well-veiled letters which were intended
to test his good faith. At this point the father and the abductors
seemed about to agree, when the officials again intervened and caused
the grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisement that
he would not compound a felony by paying money for the return of his
child. But this stand had hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful
anxiety caused another change of front.
Unquestionably this vacillation had a harmful effect in more than one
direction. Its most serious consequence was that it gave the abductors
the impression that they were dealing with a man who did not know
his own mind, could not be relied upon to keep his promises, and was
obviously in the control of the officers. Accordingly they moved
with supercaution and began to impose impossible conditions. By this
time they had written the parents of their prisoner at least a dozen
letters, each containing more terrifying threats than its antecedents.
To look this correspondence over at this late day is to see the
nervousness of the abductors, slowly mounting to the point of extreme
danger to the child. But Mr. Ross failed to see the peril, or was
overpersuaded by official opinion.
At this crucial point in the negotiations the blunder of all blunders
was made. Philadelphia was tremulous with excitement. The police of
every American city were looking for the apparition of the boy or his
kidnappers. Officials in the chief British and Continental ports were
watching arriving ships for the fugitives, and millions of newspaper
readers were following the case in eager suspense. Naturally the police
and the other officials of Philadelphia felt that the eyes of the world
were upon them. They quite humanly decided on a course calculated to
bring them celebrity in case of success and ample justification in case
of failure. In other words, they made the gesture typical of baffled
officialdom, without respect to the safety of the missing child or the
real interests of its parents. At a meeting presided over by the mayor,
attended by leading citizens and advised by the chiefs of the police,
a reward of twenty thousand dollars, to match the amount of ransom
demanded, was subscribed and advertised. The terms called for “evidence
leading to the capture and conviction of the abductors of Charlie Ross
and the safe return of the child,” conditions which may be cynically
viewed as incongruous. The following day the chief of police announced
that his men, should they participate in the successful coup, would
claim no part of the reward.
All this was intended, to be sure, as an inducement to informers, the
hope being, apparently, that some one inside the kidnapping conspiracy
would be bribed into revelations. But the actual result was quite the
opposite. A sudden hush fell upon the writer of the letters. Also,
there were no more communications in the _Ledger_. A week passed
without further word, and the parents of the boy were thrown into utter
hopelessness. Finally another letter came, this time from New York,
whereas all previous notes had been mailed in Philadelphia. It was
clear that the offer of a high reward had led the abductors to leave
the city, and their letter showed that they had slipped away with their
prisoner, in spite of the vaunted precautions.
The next note from the criminals warned Ross in terms of impressive
finality that he must at once abandon the detectives and come to terms.
He signified his intention of complying by inserting an advertisement
in the _New York Herald_, as directed by the abductors. They wrote him
that they would shortly inform him of the manner in which the money was
to be paid over. Finally the telling note came. It commanded Mr. Ross
to procure twenty thousand dollars in bank notes of small denomination.
These he was to place in a leather traveling bag, which was to be
painted white so that it might be visible at night. With this bag of
money, Ross was to board the midnight train for New York on the night
of July 30-31 and stand on the rear platform, ready to toss the bag to
the track. As soon as he should see a bright light and a white flag
being waved, he was to let go the money, but the train was not to stop
until the next station was reached. In case these conditions were fully
and faithfully met, the child would be restored, safe and sound, within
a few hours.
Ross, after consultation with the police, decided to temporize once
more. He got the white painted bag, as commanded, and took the
midnight train, prepared to change to a Hudson River train in New York
and continue his journey to Albany, as the abductors had further
instructed. But there was no money in the valise. Instead, it contained
a letter in which Ross said that he could not pay until he saw the
child before him. He insisted that the exchange be made simultaneously
and suggested that communication through the newspapers was not
satisfactory, since it was public and betrayed all plans to the police.
Some closer and secret way of communicating must be devised, he wrote.
[Illustration: ~~ CHARLIE ROSS ~~]
So Mr. Ross set out with a police escort. He rode to New York on the
rear platform of one train and to Albany on another. But the agent
of the kidnappers did not appear, and Ross returned to Philadelphia
crestfallen, only to find that a false newspaper report had caused
the plan to miscarry. One of the papers had announced that Ross was
going West to follow up a clew. The kidnappers had seen this and
decided that their man was not going to make the trip to New York and
Albany. Consequently there was no one along the track to receive the
valise. Perhaps it was just as well. The abductors would have laughed
at the empty police dodge of suggesting a closer and secret method of
communication--for the purpose of betraying the malefactors, of course.
From this point on, Ross and the abductors continued to argue, through
the _New York Herald_, the question of simultaneous exchange of the
boy and money. Ross naturally took the position that he could not risk
being imposed on by men who perhaps did not have the child at all. The
robbers, on their side, contended that they could not see any safe way
of making a synchronous exchange. So the negotiations dragged along.
The New York police entered the case on August 2, when Chief Walling
sent to Philadelphia for the letters received by Mr. Ross from the
abductors. They were taken to New York by Captain Heins of the
Philadelphia police, and “Chief Walling’s informant identified the
writing as that of William Mosher, alias Johnson.”
In order to draw the line between fact and fable as clearly as
possible at this point, I quote from official police sources, namely,
“Celebrated Criminal Cases of America,” by Thomas S. Duke, captain
of police, San Francisco, published in 1910. Captain Duke says that
his facts have been “verified with the assistance of police officials
throughout the country.” He continues with respect to the Ross case:
“The informant then stated that in April, 1874--the year in
question--Mosher and Joseph Douglas, alias Clark, endeavored to
persuade him to participate in the kidnapping of one of the Vanderbilt
children, while the child was playing on the lawn surrounding the
family residence at Throgsneck, Long Island. (Evidently a confusion.)
The child was to be held until a ransom of fifty thousand dollars was
obtained, and the informant’s part of the plot would be to take the
child on a small launch and keep it in seclusion until the money was
received, but he declined to enter into the conspiracy.”
With all due respect to the police and to official versions, this
report smells strongly of fabrication after the fact, as we shall
see. It is, however, true that the New York police had some sort of
information early in August, and it may even be true that they had
suspicions of Mosher and were on the lookout for him. A history of
subsequent events will give the surest light on this disputed point.
The negotiations between Ross and the abductors continued in a
desultory fashion, without any attempt to deliver the child or get
the ransom, until toward the middle of November. At this time the
kidnappers arranged a meeting in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York. Mr.
Ross’ agents were to be there with the twenty thousand dollars in a
package. A messenger was to call for this some time during the day.
His approach and departure had been carefully planned. In case he was
watched or followed, he would not find the abductors on his return, and
the child would be killed. Only good faith could succeed. Mr. Ross was
to insert in the _New York Herald_ a personal reading, “Saul of Tarsus,
Fifth Avenue Hotel--instant.” This would indicate his decision to pay
the money and signify the day he would be at the hotel.
Accordingly the father of the missing boy had the advertisement
published, saying that he would be at the hotel with the money
“Wednesday, eighteenth, all day.” Ross’ brother and nephew kept the
tryst, but no messenger came for the money, and the last hope of the
family seemed broken.
The Rosses had long since given up the detectives and recognized
the futility of police promises. The father of the boy had, in his
distraction, even voiced some uncomplimentary sentiments pertaining
to the guardians of the law, with the result that the unhappy man was
subjected to taunt and insult and the questioning of his motives.
Resort was, accordingly, had to the Pinkerton detectives, who evidently
counseled Mr. Ross to act in secret. In any event, the appointment
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel was the last of its kind to be made, though
Ross and the abductors seemed to have been in contact at later dates.
Whatever the precise facts may be on this point, five months had soon
gone by without the recovery of the boy, or the apprehension of the
kidnappers, while search was apparently being made in many countries.
If, as claimed, Chief Walling of the New York police had direct
information bearing on the identity of the abductors the first week
in August, he managed a veritable feat of inefficiency, for he and
his men failed, in four months, to find a widely known criminal who
was afterward shown to have been in and about New York all of that
time. Not the police, but a stroke of destiny, intervened to break the
impasse.
On the stormy night of December 14-15, 1874, burglars entered the
summer home of Charles H. Van Brunt, presiding justice of the appellate
division of the New York supreme court. This mansion stood overlooking
New York Bay from the fashionable Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. The
villa was then unoccupied, but in the course of the preceding summer
Justice Van Brunt had installed a burglar alarm system which connected
with a gong in the home of his brother, J. Holmes Van Brunt, about two
hundred yards distant from the jurist’s hot weather residence. Holmes
Van Brunt occupied his house the year around. He was at home on the
night in question, and the sounding of the gong brought him out of bed.
He sent his son out to reconnoiter, and the young man came back with
the report that there was a light moving in his uncle’s place.
Holmes Van Brunt summoned two hired men from their quarters, armed
them with revolvers or shotguns and went out to trap the intruders. The
house of Justice Van Brunt was surrounded by the four men, who waited
for the burglars to emerge. After half an hour two figures were seen
to issue from the cellar door and were challenged. They answered by
opening fire. The first was wounded by Holmes Van Brunt. The second ran
around the house, only to be intercepted by young Van Brunt and shot
down, dying instantly.
When the Van Brunts and their servants gathered about the wounded man,
who was lying on the sodden ground in the agony of death, he signified
that he wished to make a statement. An umbrella was held over him to
keep off the driving rain, and he said, in gasping sentences, that
he was Joseph Douglas, and that his companion was William Mosher. He
understood he was dying and therefore wished to tell the truth. He and
Mosher had stolen Charlie Ross to make money. He did not know where
the child was, but Mosher could tell. Mr. Van Brunt told him that
Mosher was dead, and the body of the other burglar was carried over and
exhibited to the dying man. Douglas then gasped that the child would
be returned safely in a few days. On hearing one of the party express
doubt about his story, Douglas is said to have remarked:
“Chief Walling knows all about us and was after us, and now he has us.”
Douglas died there on the lawn, with the rain drenching his tortured
body. Both he and Mosher were identified from the police records by
officers who had known them and by relatives. Walter Ross and a man
who had seen the kidnappers driving through the streets of Germantown
with the two boys, were taken to New York. The brother of the kidnapped
child, though he was purposely kept in the dark as to his mission,
immediately recognized the dead men in the morgue as the abductors,
saying that Douglas was the one who gave the candy, and that Mosher
had driven the horse. This identification was confirmed by the other
witness.
The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiously and hourly
expected. But he had not arrived at the end of a week, and the police
officials immediately moved in new directions.
Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt, of New York, a
former police officer, who was later convicted of complicity in the
abduction. Westervelt and Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-time
policeman made a rambling statement containing little information,
but his sister admitted that she had been privy to the matter of the
kidnapping. She had known for several months, she said, that her
husband had kidnapped Charlie Ross, but she had not been consulted in
his planning, and did not know where he had kept the child hidden, and
was unable to give any information.
Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed the child to be alive
and stated her reasons. She did not believe her husband, burglar and
kidnapper though he was, capable of injuring a child. He had four of
his own and had always been a good father. The poverty of his family
had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs. Mosher related, she had
pleaded with her husband to return the stolen boy to his parents,
saying that it was cruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be
little chance of collecting the ransom safely, and that the danger to
the abductors was becoming greater every day. This conversation, she
said, had taken place only a few days before the Van Brunt burglary
and Mosher’s death. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed that the
child should be sent home, she felt sure it was still living.
But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of his abductors only
intensified the quest for the boy. Detectives were sent to Europe, to
Mexico, to the Pacific coast, and to various other places, whither
false clews pointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Ross
himself, in the course of the next few years, made hundreds of journeys
to look at suspected children in all parts of the United States. He
spent, according to his own account, more than sixty thousand dollars
on these hopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resulted as
had all the others. At last, after more than twenty years of seeking,
Christian K. Ross gave up in despair, saying he felt sure the boy must
be dead.
For some time after the kidnappers had been killed and identified, a
large part of the American public suspected that Westervelt or Mrs.
Mosher, or some one connected with them, was detaining the missing
child for fear of arrest and prosecution in case of its return home.
The theory was that Charlie Ross was old enough to observe, remember
and talk. He might, if released, give information that would lead to
the imprisonment of Mosher’s and Douglas’ confederates. Accordingly,
steps were taken to get the child back at any compromise. The
Pennsylvania legislature passed an act, in February, 1875, which
fixed the penalty for abducting or detaining a child at twenty-five
years’ imprisonment, but the new law contained a proviso that any
person or persons delivering a stolen child to the nearest sheriff
on or before the twenty-fifth day of March, 1875, should be immune
from any punishment. At the same time Mr. Ross offered a cash reward
of five thousand dollars, payable on delivery of the child, and no
questions asked. He named more than half a dozen responsible firms at
whose places of business the child might be left for identification,
announcing that all these business houses were prepared to pay the
reward on the spot, and guaranteeing that those bringing in the boy
would not be detained.
All this was in vain, and the conclusion had at last to be reached that
the boy was beyond human powers of restoration.
To tell what seems to have been the truth--though it was suspected at
the time--the New York police had fairly reliable information on Mosher
and Douglas soon after the crime. Chief Walling appears, though he
never openly said so, to have been informed by a brother of Mosher’s
who was on bad terms with the kidnapper. Not long afterwards he had
Westervelt brought in for questioning. That worthy had been dismissed
from the New York police force a few months earlier for neglect of duty
or shielding a policy room. His sister was Bill Mosher’s (the suspected
man’s) wife and it was known that Westervelt had been in Philadelphia
about the time of the abduction of Charlie Ross. He was trying, by
every device, to get himself reinstated as a policeman, and Walling
held out to him the double bait of renewed employment and the whole of
the twenty thousand dollars of reward offered for the return of the
boy and the capture of the kidnappers.
Here a monumental piece of inefficiency and stupidity seems to have
been committed, for though Westervelt visited the chief of police
no fewer than twenty times, he was never trailed to his scores of
appointments with his brother-in-law and the other abductor. Neither
did the astute guardians of the law get wind of the fact that Mosher
and Douglas were in and about New York most of the time. They failed
to find out that Westervelt and probably one of the others had been
seen with the little Ross boy in their hands. Indeed, they failed
to make the least progress in the case, though they had definite
information concerning the names of the kidnappers, both of them
experienced criminals with long records. It might be hard to discover
a more dreadful piece of police bluffing and blundering. First the
Philadelphia and then the New York forces gave the poorest possible
advice, made the most egregious boasts and promises and then proceeded
to show the most incredible stupidity and lack of organization. A later
prosecutor summed it all up when he said the police had been, at least,
honest.
But, after Mosher and Douglas had been killed at Judge Van Brunt’s
house and Douglas had made his dying statements, it was easy to lure
Westervelt to Philadelphia, arrest him, charge him with aiding the
kidnappers and his wife with having been an accessory. Walter Ross had
identified Mosher and Douglas as the men who had been in the buggy but
had never seen Westervelt. A neighboring merchant appeared, however,
and picked him out as the man who had spent half an hour in his shop a
few weeks after the kidnapping, asking many questions about the Rosses,
especially as to their financial position and the rumor that Christian
K. Ross was bankrupt. Another man had seen him about Bay Ridge the
day before Mosher and Douglas broke into the Van Brunt house and were
killed. A woman appeared who had seen Westervelt riding on a Brooklyn
horse-car with a child like Charlie Ross. In short, it was soon
reasonably clear that the one-time New York policeman had conspired
with his brother-in-law and the other man to seize the boy and get the
ransom. Westervelt’s motives were rancor at being caught at his tricks
and dismissed and financial necessity, for he was almost in want after
his discharge. Apparently, he had assisted in the preparations for the
kidnapping, had the boy in his charge for a time and used his standing
as a former officer to hoodwink the New York police. He had also had to
do with some of the ransom letters.
On August 30, 1875, Westervelt was brought to trial in the Court of
Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia, Judge Elcock presiding. Theodore V.
Burgin and George J. Berger, the two men who had helped the Van Brunts
waylay and kill the two burglars, testified as to Douglas’ dying
story. The witnesses above mentioned told their versions of what they
had heard and observed. A porter in Stromberg’s Tavern, a drinking
resort at 74 Mott Street, then not yet overrun by the Celestial
hordes, testified that Westervelt was often at the Tavern drinking
and consulting with Mosher and Douglas, that he had boasted he could
name the kidnappers and that he had arranged for secret signals to
reveal the presence of the two confederates now dead. Chief Walling
also testified against the man. The jury returned a verdict of guilty
on three counts of the indictment, reaching its decision on September
20, after long deliberation. On October 9, Judge Elcock sentenced the
disgraced policeman to serve seven years in solitary confinement at
labor, in the Eastern Penitentiary.
Westervelt took his medicine. Never did he admit that the decision
against him was just, confess that he had taken any part in the
kidnapping or yield the least hint as to the fate of the unfortunate
little boy.
Nothing can touch the heart more than the fearful vigil of the parents
in such a case. In his book, Christian K. Ross recites, without
improper emotion, that, not counting the cases looked into for him
by the Pinkertons, he personally or through others investigated two
hundred and seventy-three children reported to be the lost Charlie. In
every case there was a mistake or a deception. Some of the lads put
forward were old enough to have been conventional uncles to him.
In the following decades many strange rumors were bruited, many false
trails followed to their empty endings, and many spurious or unbalanced
claimants investigated and exposed. The Charlie Ross fever did not die
down for a full generation, and even to-day mothers in the outlying
States frighten their children into obedience with the name and rumor
of this stolen boy. He has become a fearful tradition, a figure of
pathos and terror for the generations.
As recently as June 5 of the current year, the _Los Angeles Times_,
a journal staid to reaction, printed long and credulous sticks of
type to the effect that John W. Brown, ill in the General Hospital of
Los Angeles, was really the long lost Charlie Ross. The evil rogue
“confessed” that he had remained silent for fifty years in order to
“guard the honor of my mother” and said he had been kidnapped by his
“foster-father, William Henry Brown,” for revenge when Mrs. Ross
“declined to have anything further to do with him.”
Comment upon such caddism can be clinical only. The fact that the
wretch who uttered it was sick and dying alone explains the fevered
hallucination.
As an old newspaper man, I know that any kind of an item suggesting the
discovery of Charlie Ross is always good copy and will be telegraphed
about the country from end to end, and printed at greater or lesser
length. If the thing has the least aura of credibility about it, Sunday
features will follow, remarkable mainly for their inaccuracies. In
other words, that sad little boy of Washington Lane long since became a
classic to the American press.
At the end of more than fifty years the commentator can hazard no
safer opinion on the probable fate of Charlie Ross than did his
contemporaries. The popular theories then were that he had died of
grief and privation, that Mosher had drowned him in New York Bay when
he felt the police were near at hand, or that he had been adopted by
some distant family and taught to forget his home and parents. Of these
hollow guesses, the reader may take his choice now as then.
II
“SEVERED FROM THE RACE”
Headless horsemen and other strange ghostly figures march nightly on
the beach at Nag’s Head. For more than two years these shades and
spectres have been seen and Coast Guardsman Steve Basnight has been
trying vainly to convince his fellows. They have laughed upon him with
sepulchral laughter, as though the dead enjoyed their mirth. They have
chided him as a seer of visions, a mad hallucinant.
But now there are others who have seen and fled. Mrs. Alice Grice,
passing the lonely sands in her motor, had trouble with the engine
and saw or thought she saw a man standing there, brooding across the
waters. She called to him and he, as one shaken from some immortal
reverie, moved slowly off, turning not, nor seeming quite to walk, but
floating into the fog, silent and serene.
Some scoffers have suggested that these be but smugglers or rum
runners, enlarged in the spume by the eyes of terror. But that cannot
be so, for the coast guard is staunch and active. This is no ordinary
visitor, no thing of flesh and blood. This is some grieved and restless
spirit, risen through a transcendence of his grave and come to haunt
this wild and forlorn region.
George Midgett, long a scoffer, has seen this uncharnelled being most
closely and accurately. It is a tall, great man, clad in purest white,
strolling along the beach in the full moonlight, which is no clearer
than the sad and dreaming face.
It is Aaron Burr. And he is seeking his lost daughter, whose wrecked
ship is believed by many to have been driven ashore at this point.