This day in history: American socialite and heiress Dorothy Arnold mysteriously disappeared in New York on this day in 1910.
On the morning of December 12, 1910, Arnold informed her mother that she was going shopping for a dress. Mary Francis offered to go with her daughter, but Dorothy declined the offer, telling her mother she would call her if she found a suitable dress. According to the Arnold family, Dorothy had approximately $25–30 cash in her possession (approximately $694 to $833 in today's money).
She went to one store to buy chocolates, and then another store to buy a book. The clerks who waited on Arnold in both stores later said that she was courteous and did not exhibit any unusual behavior.
Outside the bookstore, Arnold ran into a friend named Gladys King who recalled that the two spoke briefly about Marjorie's upcoming debutante party and that Arnold seemed to be in good spirits. King then excused herself to meet her mother for lunch. She recalled that Arnold told her she was going to walk home through Central Park.
There were no published reports of Dorothy Arnold actually buying a dress.
By the early evening, Arnold had failed to return home for dinner. As she never missed meals without informing her family, the Arnolds became worried. They began calling Arnold's friends to find her whereabouts but no one had seen her.
Fearing that their daughter's disappearance would draw unwanted media attention and could become socially embarrassing, the Arnold family didn't report Dorothy's disappearance to the police for weeks. It is speculated that the family was influenced by the 1909 disappearance of Adele Boas, a 13 year old girl who was reported missing from Central Park and later found to have run away to Boston. She later returned home. The Boas family, also prominent New Yorkers, were scandalized and shamed in the newspapers after the incident.
In an attempt to keep the incident out of the press, the Arnold family quietly contacted John S. Keith, a family friend and lawyer, the morning following Dorothy's disappearance. Keith arrived at the family home and searched Arnold's bedroom. He discovered that except for the outfit she was wearing, all of Arnold's clothes and other personal belongings were in her room. Keith also found personal letters with foreign postmarks in her desk, two folders for transatlantic ocean liners on the desk, and burned papers in the fireplace. The burned papers were presumed to be the rejected manuscripts Arnold submitted to McClure's magazine. Over the following weeks, Keith visited jails, hospitals and morgues in New York City, Philadelphia and Boston, but did not find any sign of Arnold. After Keith's search proved fruitless, he suggested that the Arnold family hire Pinkerton detectives to investigate.
The Pinkertons theorized that she may have eloped.
By the end of January 1911, the NYPD said they still believed that Arnold was alive and would return on her own accord. Arnold's family, however, said they had come to believe that she was dead. Around this time, Francis Arnold told the press that he believed from the start that his daughter had been attacked and killed while walking home through Central Park and that her body had been thrown into the Central Park Reservoir. He cited two clues, which he would not publicly disclose, that confirmed his suspicions.
Police dismissed his theory because in the days leading up to Arnold's disappearance, the temperature in New York City had dropped to 21 degrees Fahrenheit and the reservoir had frozen solid. The police searched Central Park anyway but found no trace of Dorothy Arnold. When the reservoir thawed that spring, police searched the water but did not find a body.
Numerous theories and rumors regarding Arnold's disappearance continued. One theory was that Arnold had slipped on an icy sidewalk, struck her head and was in a hospital with total amnesia.
Some of Arnold's family members and friends also said they believed that Arnold had committed suicide because of a failed relationship.
One of the more widespread rumors was that Arnold had become pregnant, had sought an abortion, had died during or after the botched procedure, and had been secretly buried or cremated. This rumor gained some credibility when, in early April 1916, an illegal abortion clinic operating out of the basement of a home in Bellevue, Pennsylvania was raided by police. The clinic was run by Dr. C.C. Meredith and became notoriously known as "The House of Mystery," after numerous women from the area went missing after visiting the clinic. One of the doctors who worked at the clinic, Dr. H.E. Lutz, testified to the New York County District Attorney that Dr. Meredith told him that Arnold had died there after experiencing complications from an abortion. Dr. Lutz claimed that, like many of the women who had undergone abortions at the clinic and died, her body was burned in the furnace.
While the district attorney said he believed that Arnold had died at the clinic, Francis Arnold said he thought the story was "...ridiculous and absolutely untrue." The Arnold family lawyer John S. Keith later told the media that two months after Dorothy Arnold disappeared, he got a tip from an attorney in Pittsburgh that she was in a local sanatorium. Keith and two other detectives traveled to Pittsburgh but discovered that the woman was not Arnold.
In April 1916, a convicted felon named Edward Glennoris claimed that he was paid $250 to bury the body of a young woman in December 1910. Further investigation proved his claim was false.
Years after Arnold disappeared, numerous alleged sightings from all over the U.S. were still being reported. Police continued to investigate the reports, but all proved to be false. The Arnold family also continued to receive letters from women claiming to be Dorothy Arnold. These were also investigated and also proved to be false. One such letter came from an attorney in California who claimed that Arnold was living as "Ella Nevins" in Los Angeles, a claim that her father disputed.
The case gained attention again on April 8, 1921, when "during a lecture in New York, Captain John H. Ayers of the Bureau of Missing Persons claimed that Dorothy Arnold's fate had been known to the Bureau and her family for some time. Ayers refused to elaborate and would not say if Arnold was alive or dead." The following day, Ayers claimed that he was misquoted and denied that Arnold's fate was known.
In the weeks following his daughter's disappearance, Francis Arnold spent approximately $250,000 trying to find his daughter. He continued to maintain that he believed Dorothy had been kidnapped and murdered on the day she disappeared or shortly thereafter.
"According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUS) database, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 600,000 persons of all ages go missing every year, and approximately 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered every year." Source
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