Olive Oatman

Olive Oatman

The account of Olive Oatman is a story of a child who gets kidnapped by Indians and learns to adapt to her “new normal,” a tale we might be able to associate with our own “new normal.”

          Olive Oatman was born on September 7^th, 1837 in Illinois into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But, in 1850, when Olive was 13, her family broke with the Church and traveled, with a group of other members of the Brewsterites (people who followed the Mormon rebel James C. Brewster), to southeast California through western Arizona. In the summer of 1850, 90 people left Independence, Missouri, heading into the wild in search of a place where they could safely raise their children and practice their religion.

          At some point, there was a discussion on exactly how to proceed, what direction to go in. The Oatman’s decided to take the Sante Fe route with some other members of the group. They were warned, though, that there were Indian tribes that were hostile to the white man, so they were warned to be careful. But Royal Oatman, his wife Mary and their seven children (ages 1-17) were true pioneers and were not going to let something like an Indian raid stop them. In fact, they believed they could bring their religion to the natives.

          Ninety miles east of Yuma, the party was attacked by the Yavapais tribe. They demanded food and tobacco. When the party refused, the tribe attacked, leaving Royal, Mary, and four of their children dead, with Lorenzo, the 15-year-old unconscious and left for dead.

          When he comes to, he struggles but eventually connects with a Mormon settlement. They tended to his wounds, and when he was well enough, they took him back to the scene of the massacre. He expected to see eight bodies, but there were only six. Where were his sisters Olive and Mary Anne? Olive, who was 13 and Mary Anne, who was seven, was kidnapped by the tribe that had slaughtered his family.

          The girls were taken to the tribe’s settlement 60 miles away. They were tied with ropes and forced to walk the whole way with no food or rest. If they asked for food or to stop and rest for a while, they were poked with sharp lances. The girls learned exceedingly early on in their capture to not ask.

          When they arrived at the village, the girls realized they were going to be slaves. You must remember that many tribes would capture whites to use them as slaves or to replace family members who had died.

          The girl’s main tasks were to forage the forest for food and firewood. The children of the tribe would burn them with fire sticks. They were regularly beaten and thought they would eventually be killed. They had resigned to die.

          When Olive and Mary Anne had been with the Yavapais tribe for a year, they were suddenly traded to the Mojave’s for horses, blankets, vegetables, and trinkets. They again had a long walk to their new home, expecting their situation to be the same with the Mojave’s as it had been with the Yavapais’.

          But they were pleasantly surprised when they came to the settlement and found they were to be cared for and eventually adopted by the tribe’s leader’s wife, Espanesay. The two were no longer asked to work and could do pretty much what they wanted. They were given land and seeds to grow their own crops. They became so assimilated in the tribe that they were each given the traditional tattoos on their chins and arms that the other women of the tribe were given. The Indians felt that with the tattoos, the women were easily identified in the afterlife as belonging to that tribe.

          In fact, the girls became so assimulated that in February 1854, when 200 white railroad surveyors spent a week camping right next to the tribe, the girls never attempted to reveal themselves or to ask for any help.

          When Mary Anne is 10, a drought devastated the crops, resulting in a food shortage. Most children in the tribe died of starvation, including Mary Anne, but not Olive. The tribe leader’s wife, Aespaneo and her daughter Topeka would sneak food to Olive, so she would not suffer the same fate as her sister. It seems there was a preference for the two women for Olive over Mary Anne. After this, Olive was given a clan name, Oach.

          All this time, Lorenzo had been searching for his two sisters. A man named Francisco followed the rumors the government had heard that there was a white girl living with the Mojave. The tribe was told to return the girls or have the girls come to them to state they want to stay with the Indians. At first, they did not even bother to reply, but Lorenzo was persistent, so they next said that they didn’t have any white girl.

          Finally, they figured out they couldn’t win. Olive tried to help her captors and sent a letter:

“I found that they had told Francisco that I was not an American, that I was from a race of people much like the Indians, living away from the setting sun. They had painted my face, and feet, and hands of a dun, dingy color, unlike that of any race I ever saw. This they told me they did to deceive Francisco; and that I must not talk to him in American [sic]. They told me to talk to him in another language and to tell him that I was not an American. They then waited to hear the result, expecting to hear my gibberish nonsense and to witness the convincing effect upon Francisco. But I spoke to him in broken English, and told him the truth, and what they had enjoined me to do. He started from his seat in a perfect rage, vowing that he would be imposed upon no longer.” 

            The Mohave’s were angry; they had believed that Olive wanted to stay with them. At that time, there was even talk of killing Olive.

            Olive was eventually ransomed back to the U.S. Government for a horse, some blankets and some beads. The payment the Mojave’s gave to the tribe that originally kidnapped Olive was more than that. Had she depreciated that much?

            Olive’s adopted sister joined her to make sure that the government did not renege on the deal. It took 20 days to reach Fort Yuma…Olive was on the road again! They finally reached it on February 22, 1856.

            They arrived at Fort Yuma in the traditional garb of the tribe, Mohave skirts with bare chests. Olive washed her face and hair and was loaned western clothes. She was welcomed with a cheering crowd. At this time, Olive became aware that her brother Lorenzo had also survived the massacre. 

           

Minister Royal Stratton wrote a book called Life Among Indians (Captivity of the Oatman Girls.) Olive went around the country talking about her experience.  She claimed that neither tribe raped nor had any form of sexual contact with her. But a childhood friend said Olive had married while with the Mojaves and had two boys. Olive denied she had said that.

            Olive said her tattoos were done so she could be identified as their property if she ever escaped, but all Mojave women were tattooed the same way Olive was.

            After the book came out, Olive was a celebrity and lived her life under a microscope. Her friend said that Olive was very unhappy and wanted to return to the tribe.

            Olive traveled to New York to see Irataba, a Mohave tribal dignitary. She said, “They met as friends.” In November 1865, Olive married John B. Fairchild, a rancher, and banker in Rochester, New York.  She adopted a little girl, Mamie. Throughout the rest of her life, she suffered from depression and severe headaches. In a letter, she wrote some friends that the depression was caused by the massacre of her family, and others she told it was because she was wrenched away from the Mojave. She would try to cover her facial tattoos with make or a veil, but it was not always easy for her to try to have a normal life. In 1903, she died of a heart attack.

            It seems that Olive was not unhappy in her life with the Mohaves, but there is another story of a woman who was kidnapped with a vastly different outcome.

           

On March 15^th, 1697, Hannah Duston (40)  and her neighbor were captured by a group from a native American tribe from Haverhill, Massachusetts. Other neighbors were abducted along with those two. Hannah had given birth to a little boy a week before the abduction, and the infant was brought along. The group started off for Canada. Along the way, one of the members of the tribe killed the infant, thinking he was slowing his mother down.

            After two weeks, the abducted group were left with a Native American family, two men, three women, and seven children along with another captive Samuel Leornardson, who had been with the family for a year and a half.

           

One night, while the family was sleeping, Duston, Neff, and Leonardson slaughtered and scalped most of the family, including the children. The three took one of the family’s canoes and headed down the Merrimack River to Massachusetts where they were haled heroes at first, even getting a fifty-pound reward. But later, as the details of the attack came to light, many began to be disturbed that the group had not only killed the adults but the children, too. This seemed as if it was totally unnecessary 

            I take no political stance on the right or wrong of any of the actions here, just two stories of a time far removed from us to give us a little perspective.

Heavenly Creatures? Juliet Hulm and Pauline Parker

Pauline Parker at 16 was dark and dumpy with cold brown eyes. Walking with a limp due to a case of osteomyelitis made her unable to participate in sports. Her friend Juliet Hulm owned a horse, so let her friend ride it. Pauline desperately wanted her parents to buy her her own horse, but her

family didn’t have the same kind of money that Juliet’s did. She lived in an inner-city home that served as a rooming house. Her parents were not married, and her father managed a fish shop. To keep herself busy, Pauline wrote novels and operas, an unusual hobby for a girl of 16.

Juliet Hulm was a 15 years old beauty, tall and sophisticated, but also moody, scowling, and strong-willed. She was the daughter of a university rector and lived in a large, stately home. The girls’ home lives couldn’t be any more different.

In 1953, Juliet was put into a hospital for tuberculosis for four months; during this time, Pauline wrote to her every day, and Juliet found these letters to be her lifeline. Juliet could quote classic poets, enjoyed classical music and sculpting in clay. She also shared an interest with her friend in writing. She was discharged but was not considered cured. Both girls romanticized being sick.

Pauline worshipped her friend Juliet. She was a beautiful girl, and Pauline wanted to spend all her time with her friend, and Juliet felt the same way too. They talked about each other all the time, which concerned their parents. Their concern grew when the girls’ grades began to go down.

The parents also worried about the girls’ relationship. The girls seemed to be unusually attached to each other. They were frantic if they couldn’t see each other.

Against her parents’ wishes and encouraged by Juliet, Pauline bought a horse.  How she paid for it in unknown. When her parents found out, they felt if they confronted her she would have a fit. So, they stayed quiet.

Soon, Juliet suddenly lost interest in horses and sold her horse to her family’s house guest, Walter Perry. She had a reason to want/need money.

Juliet had found her mother and Perry in bed together. Her father found out and went to England, leaving Juliet with her mother. Her mother and Perry would later marry after the Hulms divorced. It is interesting that later when Juliet wanted to change her name, she chose the last name Perry, the surname of the man who broke up her parents’ marriage. 

Juliet’s father found out that the girls were planning to go to America and sell their movie scripts to Hollywood, so he called the Parkers, telling them he had a solution to their mutual problem. He was moving away from New Zealand to South Africa and taking Juliet with him. The Parkers were thrilled…. Pauline not so much.

Juliet insisted that her friend Pauline had to come with them, but her father said an emphatic NO. They then went to Honora Parker, Pauline’s mother, but she said NO, too. The girls saw Honora as their real barricade to their being together, so they began to plot her murder.

On Jun 22, 1954 at 3 p.m., a grey day, Honora, Juliet, and Pauline went for a walk after having snacks at a kiosk in Victoria Park. Juliet went ahead and scattered colorful painted rocks on the ground. Pauline stayed with her mother and then drew her mother’s attention to the colorful rocks on the ground. When Honora bent over to pick up one of the rocks, the girls, who had made a weapon out of a piece of brick inside a stocking, swung the weapon and hit Honora over and over on the head. Both girls took turns. In total, there were 24 separate wounds.

The girls, covered in Pauline’s mother’s blood and crying hysterically, returned to the kiosk and said, “It’s Mummy! She’s dead!” They told Mrs. Ritchie, who worked at the kiosk, that they tried to pick up and carry Honora, but she was too heavy. They hoped that story explained why they had so much blood on them.

Mrs. Ritchie called her husband to go look for Honora and sent the girls to clean themselves. She overheard the girls giggling and laughing while they washed Honora’s blood off themselves.

When Mr. Ritchie arrived, he found Honora under a tree with 45 wounds.

Three weeks later, the girls were arrested and held over for trial. Their trial would be the O.J. of its time. The real question was not, did they do it? But were they sane when they did it?

Of course, the prosecutor said they were sane. He called them “dirty-minded girls.” He said their motive was that Honora refused to let Pauline go to South Africa with Juliet. The sad part of this was that even by killing Honora they still would have not gotten to go together. Juliet’s father would never have allowed that either.

The prosecution highlighted the girls’ intense devotion to each other and the amount of time the girls spent together in each other’s beds although there is no real evidence of a sexual relationship between the girls.

The two girls seemed very detached during the trail. Pauline wore a hat that shielded her face, and Juliet wore a paisley scarf.  Juliet would occasionally talk to Pauline, but Pauline would just nod in response.

Juliet’s father, Dr. Hulm, left the country with his son, and with Honora in her grave, Pauline’s father, Mr. Parker and Juliet’s mother, Mrs. Hulm were left to confront the press day in and day out during the trial.

Mrs. Hulm testified that because her daughter was sick so much of the time, Pauline would come over and keep her company. This, she hoped, would explain the times the girls were seen in the same bed.

The girls were both evaluated by Dr. Reginald Medicott, and he testified that Juliet lived in a fantasy world with Pauline. They both worshipped the god Pan (ruled over nature and pasturelands) and lived in what they called the 4^th world, their version of Heaven where they could go at any time they wanted. Both girls felt that what they had done was correct, after all, Mrs. Parker was trying to separate the girls, and that would not do.  Pauline was only remorseful because she claimed that her mother

haunted her in her dreams.

. Pauline’s diary was the nail in the girls’ coffins. In the diary she wrote, in the January before the murder, that she hoped she would get TB too. She chronicled their various ideas of what they would do if they ran away to America/ One of their ideas were that they both would become prostitutes and would make a lot of money.

The diary also said that on April 30^th, Pauline told Juliet that she was going to kill her mother. In May, the girls began to shoplift to get money for their trip to America.

The doctor was asked if the girls knew what the penalty was for what they had done. When she heard the question, Juliet answered by drawing her finger across her neck and Pauline looked at her and smiled.

The doctor finally said that the girls where insane, folie d deux, a madness shared by two people. He said the two had superiority complexes. He had initially thought they were homosexuals and should be separated, but he changed his mind before the trial commenced.

But, the Crown’s psychiatrist, Dr. Stalliworth said they were NOT insane; they had a clear plan, knew it was wrong and executed the plan exactly. He also said there was no doubt they were homosexuals. The prosecutor said,” these girls are not incurably insane. They are incurably bad.”

The jury took just two and a half hours to come to a verdict. The girls returned to the courtroom to hear their fate, laughing and giggling, smiling with a look of disdain on their faces.  When the guilty verdict was read, both sat calmly and indifferently. They were immediately sentenced to an indeterminate time at her majesty’s pleasure. 

Pauline was sent to Arohata Borstal prison near Wellington while Juliet when to Mount Eden, which was used to hang prisoners.

Pauline used her time well in prison by graduating from high school while Juliet was introduced to the sewing machine and knitting and spent her time writing and studying languages. She rarely talked about the murder, only saying she did it for Pauline. Both girls only served five years.

When Juliet was released from prison, she initially went to England then to America for a while, and then disappeared.

In 1984, a film about Pauline and Juliet’s crime was made into a film, Heavenly Creatures. A journalist named Lin Ferguson tracked Juliet down and found out that she had changed her name to Anne Perry and now was a Scottish based, very popular crime novelist with more than 100 books to her credit. When found, Juliet (to avoid confusion, I will continue to call them by their original names) admitted who she was. All she would say was that she had made peace with what she did. She believed that if she had not helped her friend, she would have killed herself.

Two years later, another journalist, Chris Cook, found Pauline. She was called Hilary Nathan. She had gone to college when she was released and earned a B.A. degree. Additionally, she went to New Zealand Library School. She was considered mysterious and secretive by her fellow classmates. She was purposely absent on the day of the class photo. She had never married (Juliet was unmarried, also). She lived in Kent by the time the journalist found her and was quite reclusive. Her only real interaction with people was the children she taught to horseback ride. Unlike Juliet, Pauline did not want to talk. Her older sister Wendy said Pauline was sorry for what she had done; it was just a situation that got out of hand. She spent most of her time in prayer. She didn’t have a radio or television and had not had any contact with Juliet since their last day in court.

It boggles my mind that these two girls were so enthralled with each other that they killed one of their mothers to avoid being taken away from each other, but they both were able to walk out of the courthouse right after they were sentenced and never saw or talked to each other again? There is such a disconnect to this story. These two girls never thought the rules and regulations of the world applied to them, so why would they suddenly obey the judge when he said part of their punishment was they never see each other again

The Disappearance and Murder of the McStay Family

On February 4, 2010, the McStay family, Joseph, Summer, Gianni (4), and Joseph Jr. (3), a happy prosperous family, fell off the face of the earth.

            Five days later, family members got worried when they had not heard from the family in five days, so they sent a family friend to check on the family. When he went in through an open window, what he found was a house that looked as if the family had just stepped out, with food left on the countertop and the dogs in the backyard with fresh food and water. It looked as if the McStays had someone looking after the dogs while they were away. This was beginning to look as if the McStays might have left on their own. But was that true?

            Nine days later, Joseph’s brother went to the house and left a note. Animal Control called and said they had been feeding the dogs in the McStay’s backyard and were about to take them to the shelter. Knowing that the care of the dogs would be important to his brother and that he would never leave the dogs unattended, Joseph’s brother called the police.

            Eleven days after the family went missing, police are called and search the house. Other than the food that was left out to rot, they found nothing. The family had just moved into this house, so there were boxes everywhere, nothing you wouldn’t expect.

            The day they went missing, Joseph had attended a few meetings, planned with the painter for him to come back the next day, and spent the night making cell phone calls from home while his wife, Summer was preparing for a visit to see her sister.

            The neighbor’s security cameras had caught the McStay’s car leaving the house in the evening they were last seen. The car never returned and the camera didn’t catch who was in the car when it left.

On Feb. 8^th, the McStay’s car was towed from a parking lot near the Merican border. The car

was searched, but nothing was found that wasn’t normally found in a car with two small boys: new toys, the boys' car seats. The car’s seats were adjusted for the McStay’s heights. The security cameras in the parking lot showed that the car had been dropped off there on the day it was towed.

            The assumption was that the McStay’s had parked their car and walked across the border to Mexico. But, many of Summer’s friends said she would never go to Mexico; she thought it was too dangerous there for her family.

           

Border security reviewed their cameras and found footage of a man holding the hand of a little boy and a woman holding the hand of another little child, all walking across the Mexican border at 7:00 p.m. on the 8^th. It fit with the fact that the car was left in the parking lot the same day.

                The family had mixed feeling on whether it was the McStays, but the authorities felt differently. A search of the Mc Stay’s computer found searches about what was needed in the way of identification to get children into Mexico and also lessons in Spanish. Somehow this information leads some to believe that Summer killed her family.

One issue was that Joseph had a valid passport, but Summer’s was expired and the children didn’t have any at all. In addition, one of the children’s birth certificate was found still inside the home. They could not have entered Mexico with no identification. Also, the McStays had just bought their house, and they had over $100,000 in the bank. If they left willingly, why didn’t they take their money with them?

            Stories on America’s Most Wanted, Nancy Grace, and Unsolved Mysteries did not help to bring the McStays home.

            In April of 2013, the case is turned over to the FBI, and, that November, the remains of four people were found in a shallow grave in the Mojave Desert. Two of them were adults, and two were small children. Only a few days later, it was confirmed that the bodies were, indeed, the McStay family. They had all died of blunt force trauma, and there was evidence that the family had been tortured before they died.

            A year later, Chase Merritt, a business associate of Joseph McStay and whose DNA was found in the McStay’s car was arrested..But why would this man kill the family? It turned out he had forged $21,000 checks from the McStay’s account to settle his gambling debts after the McStays went missing. Perhaps this explains why the family was tortured. Was it in an attempt to get pin numbers from the adults to get access to all the money in their accounts?

            Merritt tried to defend himself and then hired and fired numerous lawyers, dragging out his trial for years. The trial finally commenced on January 7, 2019, and 6 months later, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Merritt continues to profess his innocence 

            What an awful story. A young family was destroyed by a man whose only concern was getting money to support his gambling habit. How sad.

VICTIM: Helen Potts

KILLER:  Carlyle W. Harris

1891

Young girls are often enthralled with young men they meet in the romance of a hot summer and act impulsively. Helen Potts is one such girl, who met a charming medical student and was romanced into a marriage for the purpose of sex on summers’ end.

 In 1891, a young finishing school student named Helen Potts was found dying in her dorm room; it was believed she had died from an overdose of morphine that she had gotten from her husband Carlyle Harris, a local medical student who she had recently married in secret because her mother disapproved.

            The two met in the summer of 1889 at a family cottage in Ocean Grove. Helen liked his “lightheartedness, carelessness, and brilliance.” They were inseparable all summer, and he proposed at the end of the summer. Carlyle’s mother refused to give permission for her daughter to marry; she was just too young, probably the reason Helen was able to be coerced into this hasty marriage in the

first place.  

            The two would not accept this decision and got married in secret at City Hall using the fake names, Charles Harris and Helen Neilson. Their deception was not discovered until August when Helen got ill.

            Harris had gotten what he wanted from his new wife, SEX, so he stopped seeing her until she came to him and told him she was pregnant.

            The scheme was discovered when Helen became ill and went to see her uncle, Dr. C.W Treverton. Mrs. Potts was told and came immediately. It was at this time she was told about the marriage. The cause of the illness was an operation performed by her husband. This surgery caused septic poisoning. Yes, the operation was an abortion.

            Mrs. Potts wanted the marriage made public and that the two have a proper wedding, but Harris insisted it would ruin his career and convinced Mrs. Potts to wait until after graduation. I guess Helen had no say in the decision. Harris convinced his mother-in-law to send her daughter to a boarding school. Perhaps this was his way of getting his inconvenient wife out of his daily life.

            Harris had bragged about his many conquests and confessed he had married other women just to get them to have sex with him."[He said he] could overcome any woman's scruples ... one method was to take a bottle of ginger ale and put in it a very large portion of whiskey, the other was to marry her, but under an assumed name. “ He had also performed abortions on many of these women.  Remember, he was not yet a real doctor and should not have been performing surgery. Could it be there were other women out there who had been butchered like Helen?

           

Helen suffered from terrible insomnia, so her husband gave her a prescription for morphine to help her fall asleep. One night, she awoke and told her schoolmates that she had a wonderful dream; they just told her to go back to sleep. Her response was “Yes, but I think it will be sleep of death.” Did she have a premonition?

            Shortly after, her schoolmates noticed she was breathing very heavily, and Helen complained of numbness throughout her whole body; eventually, she could not move. A doctor was ultimately called.  He used whiskey, atropine, digitalis, and electric shock and finally artificial respiration, but nothing could bring the girl around. She died the next morning.

The doctor found a pill bottle labeled “one before retiring” which was signed C.W.H. They brought Harris to the room where his dead wife was and all he said was, “My God, what can they do to me?” He was concerned because he was not yet a doctor and not supposed to be prescribing medication. The death of his wife seemed less important than his reputation. He said he had made sure she did not have enough pills to overdose. It was believed she had taken an overdose of her

sleeping medication…the morphine.

            Her mother convinced the authorities, though, that her daughter had a heart condition and that was the cause of the death. She was able to take her daughter home and bury her.

            But, the authorities were just not convinced, so they eventually had the body exhumed. In the autopsy, the heart was seen to be fine, but the brain was congested, a sign of opiate poisoning; in addition, there was morphine in the stomach and intestines.

            Under oath, Mrs. Potts admitted she lied about her daughter’s heart condition. She just didn’t want all the bad publicity and didn’t want the secret marriage talked about in the press.

            Harris had probably obtained the morphine when it was passed around, unsupervised, at his medical school during a lecture on the effects of morphine.

           

Harris was arrested. And even though his parents bought him the most expensive lawyers they could, he was still found guilty. Harris put forth numerous appeals, but when that didn’t work, he and one of his friends and supporters appealed to the Governor for a pardon or at least clemency. After doing his own research, the Governor decided to let the execution go forth.

            Harris appeared calm and rather theatric at his execution, “exaggerated and forced” almost. It “smacked of theatre.” He spoke of his own innocence and then was finally executed for what he had done to poor Helen Potts.

            Harris was so sure he had a foolproof plan to get sex from women, but Helen proved to be the one woman who would cost him his life.

           

               

Mary Cecilia Rogers

Mary Cecilia Rogers

           

On July 28, 1841, two men spotted what they thought was a bundle of clothing floating in the river. On closer inspection, it was discovered to be a beautiful young girl. She was brought to shore and the coroner was called. He saw finger marks on the girl’s throat. An ex-boyfriend, who had seen the news in the paper that Mary Rogers was missing happened to come to the shore of the river and unidentified the body as Mary Cecilia Rogers.

             Mary Rogers was a 20-year-old girl who lived in a boarding house run by her mother. She

worked in the cigar store Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium owned by Joe Anderson. It was a popular place for authors such as James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allen Poe. She was hired as a salesgirl, but her real talent was drawing men into the shop with her beauty and charm. The shop was crowded every day with young men who wanted to converse with the pretty girl and perhaps get themselves a date, but Mary was never interested.

She became a Manhattan celebrity, so when she disappeared the first time and failed to appear for work, it was front-page headlines. Her mother said she had found a suicide note. The coroner saw the note and said Mary was “fixed and unalterable determination to destroy herself.” But she returned, saying she had gone to visit friends and did not know what all the fuss had been about. The Sun was accused of manufacturing the story to sell papers, and John Anderson was accused of developing the scheme as a publicity stunt. Shortly after, she left the Emporium to go help her mother with the boarding house. While at the boarding house, she met a cigar cutter named Daniel Payne. The two developed a romantic relationship and finally got engaged.

One night in 1841, she told Daniel she was going to visit her aunt. There was an arrangement that he would come to pick her up, but that night there was a terrible thunderstorm and Daniel thought Mary would not want to go out in that weather and decided he would get her in the morning. Now there were no telephones or text messages at that time, so Mary had no idea he was not coming to get her. The next morning Daniel and Mary’s mother found out that not only wasn’t Mary at the aunt’s, but she had not even been expected. Where had she really gone?

  A group of men were walking by the river in Hoboken near Sybil’s Cave, a local tourist attraction, not an isolated location, when they saw a bundle in the river. They borrowed a boat and dragged from the river a lovely young woman. When they reached the shore, they called for the authorities, and the coroner said she had been strangled. Her clothes were torn, and her body looked beaten. It just so happened that one of Mary’s ex-boyfriends was looking for her and came upon the group surrounding her body and recognized her as Mary Cecilia Rogers. Solving this crime became a local obsession, and it ran on the front pages of all the papers. These newspaper editors knew Mary and wanted her murder solved, but they also saw headlines that sold papers.

A few days later, two boys found the rest of Mary’s clothing in a pile in the grasses. It was suspected that the clothing had been put there after the search had been done of the area. It had already been searched thoroughly and carefully by the investigators. White gloves were found in the pile, but they couldn’t be Mary’s because she was wearing white gloves when she was fished out of the river.

The police believed that a “roaming gang of thieves” could be the culprits, but they also took a very close look at the fiancé. The couple had been arguing lately, and Mary had threatened to call off the wedding. But he had an alibi.

Frederica Loss, mother of the boys who had found the clothing, had her own tale to tell. She said that Mary and an unknown man had checked into the Nick Moore House that night. They had both gone out but had never returned. Later she heard screams from the woods. Why didn’t she tell the police her story sooner?

The papers made sure to keep the crime on the pages daily. They criticized the investigators and publicized the $750 reward posted by the Governor. The press even warned parents about letting their daughters come into the city, using Mary as an example of what can happen to them. These papers had at least one avid reader. Edgar Allen Poe devoured every word he could read on the death of Mary Rogers.

            On November 6, 1842, Frederica Loss was accidentally shot by one of her sons and lingered in pain, hallucinating for days. She told a slightly different story about what happened to Mary Rogers. Mary had come with a doctor who performed an abortion on Mary, but Mary died during the operation. Loss’s sons dumped the body in the river and later scattered her clothing in the area around the river. The sons were briefly charged, but there was not enough evidence to bring them to trial.

            One night, Daniel Payne sat on a bench near the spot Mary’s body had been found and took poison. He wrote a note saying, “To the World, I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for a misspent life.” Was this a confession? Was he on the spot where he had killed her? What did God need to forgive him for? The police would have been convinced that this was a confession and their mystery had been solved, except Daniel had an airtight alibi, so they were still left with questions with no answers.

           

Edgar Allen Poe’s obsession with the story led him to write “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” set in Paris where a naval officer was the killer. He wrote,” the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world.” 

            It was then suggested that John Anderson killed her and had paid Edgar Allen Poe $5,000 to write his story to take the suspicion away from John. John claimed to be haunted by the ghost of Mary Rogers.

            The death of Mary Cecilia Rogers was never solved. The New York Herald published a poem about Mary:

                                                She moved amid the bland perfume’

That breathes of heaven’s balmiest isle;

Her eyes had starlight’s azure gloom

And a glimpse of heaven – her smile.

What Happened to Bobby Dunbar?

On August 23, 1912, the Dunbar family went with their three boys to fish on Swayze Lake in Tennessee. When the parents, Lassie and Percy called to the children to come from the lake to have lunch, two of the boys came running immediately, but the youngest, 4-year-old Bobby was not with them. Initially, they were not worried. The assumed he was enjoying his time at the lake, so they called louder for him. No response, so the Dunbars contacted the authorities, and a search was initiated. The only evidence that the police could find that Bobby had been there were some small footprints leading away from the lake itself.

A $6,000 reward was offered ($160,000 in today’s money) and that got a lot of people interested in the search. The lake was dragged, alligators were caught and gutted to see if the child’s remains were inside, and even some threw dynamite in the lake, hoping the body, if it was there, would be shaken loose. The William Burns Detective agency became involved along with several psychics, but nothing.

Eight long months went by. The case was in the news in the few weeks after the child went missing, but like all cases like this, once the trail goes cold, the press is no longer interested. Just when it seemed the Dunbars would have to accept the fact that Bobby had probably wandered into the lake and was never coming home, a bombshell. In Mississippi, a child was found who resembled Bobby Dunbar. He was with a man named William Cantwell Walters, who claimed the boy was his nephew, the illegitimate son of his brother and a woman by the name of Julia Anderson. The boy’s name was Charles Bruce Anderson.  He said that she had left him with Walters, expecting it would be a few days, but the child was there for 13 months. When Julia was found, she agreed that the boy was her biological son. She did not agree, though, that it was the son of Walters brother. She claimed the father was a traveling salesman, a one-night stand who gave her $5 before he disappeared from her life.

Both Mrs. Dunbar and Julia Anderson went to Mississippi to bring her son home. The child was sleeping when Mrs. Dunbar arrived, and she was heard saying “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” He then woke up, looked around at the Dunbars and screamed. The child did not initially respond when called “Bobby,” and he didn’t seem to recognize Mrs. Dunbar, but she insisted he was her son.  The rest of the Dunbars agreed. They seemed to want to ignore that Bobby had a scar on his foot, and this child did not. That night, while giving “Bobby” a bath, Mrs. Dunbar exclaimed that the moles on the child matched the ones her son had.

Since King Solomon was not available, they had to rely on a judge to decide who this little boy would go home with. And, he decided that the child was Bobby Dunbar and not the son of Julia Anderson. This decision probably had a lot to do with the fact that Julia Anderson had three children out of wedlock, had left her son with Walters, not for 2 days but 13 months.

When “Bobby” came home, his hometown of Opelousas declared it a holiday and there were parties and parades.

Walter is eventually tried and convicted of kidnapping but after only two years in jail, his new attorneys appealed his conviction and it was overturned on a technicality. Fifteen years later he died of blood poisoning.

Julia went on to marry and have 8 children.

The boy was raised as Bobby Dunbar. Some say that Bobby knew he wasn’t Bobby and would visit the Andersons when he grew up. But he also told the media that he recalled the kidnapping by Walters.

In 2004, one of Bobby Dunbar’s granddaughters, Margaret Dunbar Cutright, got curious and had a DNA test done with a cousin of Bobby’s and her grandfather. The two men were NOT related. Eventually, it was determined that he was related to the Andersons.

I guess Julia was right; the boy was her son, and she had her son stolen from her, probably because Mrs. Dunbar presented a much better image of a mother than Julia did.

So…what happened to the real Bobby Dunbar? Did his parents do something to him, and then told the authorities he was missing? Did someone kidnap him from the lake that day, just not Walters? Or did this little unsupervised boy slip into the lake and drowned. Perhaps he did, and his wealthy parents found a way to raise him from the dead with the help of another neglectful mother and a little boy who wasn’t their own but was a good enough replacement?

References

Barclay, S. (2012, March 17). Bobby Dunbar. Retrieved from Historic Mysteries: www.historicmysteries.com/bobby-dunbar/

Bovsun, M. (2019, February 1). Bobby Dunbar's disappearance caused a mystery wasn't solved for 92 years. Retrieved from Daily News: www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-news-bobby-dunbar-mystery-20190203-story.html