Thinking Sideways: Dorothy Arnold

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
things we don't know the answer too. Well. Hi there,
welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. We're the

(00:26):
guys who tackle unsolved mysteries and solve the heck out
of them. Guys. Yeah, we're the guys and gang. Sorry. Yeah,
so I am joined as always by Devin and Steve. Yeah,
and so let's just dive head first into another mystery. Okay,
for I forget. This is a listener suggested episode, So
I want to give a big shout out to Ash

(00:47):
from England. Thanks. Ash. Wait, if we're a gang, do
we have hand signs? Have hand signs, have colors? We
have goodnape like this and then this one with a finger.
Yeah yeah, and there's a bird. Okay, alright, So, so
our mystery this week Dorothy Arnold. Some of you may

(01:07):
have heard of Dorothy Arnold. This is actually, um a
hundred years ago kind of a huge thing and it
got worldwide publicity. Let me talk a little bit about her.
Dorothy Harriett Camille Arnold. Was I know grandma and grandma's
names or something like that. Yeah, her mother had like
five names. That's kind of a rich people thing, I think.

(01:29):
But anyway, she was the daughter of Francis and Mary Arnold.
Francis Arnold was a stinking rich perfume and porter. Uh.
They lived in a very posh Manhattan house just to
block east of Central Park, very nice part of town.
They were listed in the Social Register, which is a
big deal for rich people. You probably, guys have probably
heard of the Social Register, right, yeah, hell, you're on it. Yeah, yeah,

(01:51):
I'm not to. Dorothy was a socialite, and definition of
socialite is quote someone who was well known in fashionable
society and spends a significant amount of time participating in
social activities such as parties and other fashionable events. That's
from Wikipedia. Parties, by the way, which none of us
ever get invited to. Well, Steve does, obviously. Social Register.

(02:17):
I said, to screw the mystery. I'm gonna spend the
next hour just ranting about the one percent. Okay, yeah,
I'm cool. How about you? No, I think that's done.
Ok alright, let's solve the mystery. Then back to Dorothy.
On Monday December twelfth, nineteen ten, so hundred four years ago,
Dorothy left the family house in the morning, saying that

(02:38):
she was going to go shopping for a dress for
her her sister's debutante. Yeah again, more more rich, socialized stuff.
She was it wasn't even yeah exactly, so she had
to have she had to obviously go buy a new
dress for that. Yeah. Anyway, she left the house to
go shopping and the family never saw her again. And
this was this was a huge deal. I mean, got

(03:00):
a lot of publicity and everybody was wanting what happened.
It was all over the newspapers. Yeah, the family and
their investigators were able to piece together her trail, at
least some of her trail where she went before she disappeared.
So first off, she went to a store at seven
and fifth Avenue. Can we talk about New York and
the way that they do streets and how confusing that is?

(03:22):
Please yes, because I still see this and it's still
confuses that it's it's it's it's avenues run one way
in streets run the other. Is that correct? Kind of
like Vancouver? You know you guys have been to the
Coup Washington, Washington, Yes, yeah, yeah, it's like I don't
I don't know which one is north south and which

(03:43):
one is east west? But is it is avenues one
way and streets the other, so I could literally be
on Fifth and Fifth potentially. Yeah, I know, it just
kind of dumb, but it is what it is. I
don't think they're gonna just enraged so many New Yorkers
the Waitland does it is so much better. I know
names of people that nobody knows. Yeah, I know. Well,

(04:06):
so anyway, I've taken the liberty of printing up this map,
which I got off a Google so you can see
the upper right hand corner where she started from and
the place where she went to buy. She stopped at
the store and bought half a pound of chocolate, which
is down here, which is five yeah, and that's two
and a half miles away, so she could hook it.

(04:27):
But I didn't mention. By the way, Dorothy was twenty
five and apparently like to walk, so she headed south
to and a half miles and then headed back north
to a bookstore. But you know, like that's an hour
walk really, Yeah, you've got a day ye walk. Yeah,
she's not in a huge harry or anything. She bought
a half a pound of chocolate, brought half chocolate, and

(04:47):
then she went to a bookstore. The bookstore is Brentano's, which,
by the way, it was in an episode of Seinfeld.
It was actually it was actually a New York Landmark
bookstore for many, many years before it got absorbed by Borders.
And I soon Borders is out of business right now
but almost Yeah, actually, yeah, I can't think of the
last time I saw brick and mortar Borders. Yeah, Bars
of Noble somehow still around. Borders. Yeah, I think I've

(05:09):
seen Borders in malls and that's the only place I've
seen him, and that was years ago. This episode of
Thinking Sideways podcast brought to you by Borders, brought to
you by defunct bookstores. I'll be our next mysteries. What
where did all the bookstores go? Oh? Anyway, so she
stopped at this bookstore and bought a book by somebody
you'd never heard of, Jane Calvin something. I did a

(05:30):
google on her. I couldn't find anything. But anyway, apparently
she was popular a hundred years ago. But she left
the paper trail at these stores because she charged her
purchases to the family accounts. Okay, both places, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I kind of a sweet dealer family. Of course, as
I said, it was stinking rich. She got a hundred
dollars in a monthly allowance, which is the equivalent of

(05:50):
d and forty dollars today today's dollars. And you know,
she had to pay did net to paying rent, didn't
have to pay utilities, didn't net paper food. Plus she
could go out opping and charge things to the family
accounts on top of her allowance she had. I think
I saw, I saw I mentioned that she had thirty
or forty in her possession. Yeah, I think the family

(06:13):
estimated she left the house. Yeah, I remember reading this.
She had a day or two before gone out with friends,
and I think she took her friends to a movie,
and then they had gotten food afterwards, and she had
gone to the bank and gotten thirty six dollars out
of the bank, which seems like such a funny number
to us today, But then was obviously a large sell

(06:34):
of cats that was probably seven or eight hundred bucks,
right and then and then they knew how much she
should have approximately spent at these locations, so they figured
she had about twenty five dollars give currency at that
for that time period on her, which again is a
pretty decent some money. It's you know, a couple hundred bucks. Yeah,
but it's not like, you know, runaway to the hills,

(06:57):
finance the rest of your life money. You know, it's
that weird middle ground. Yeah. Anyways, I think that's worth mentioning. Yeah,
more on that later, but okay, anyway, so after the bookstore,
she outside the bookstore, she ran into a friend of her,
his name Gladys King, and they chatted for a bit,
parted ways. And this wasn't about in the afternoon, according

(07:18):
to Gladys, And that was the last time she was
seen by anybody who knew her. She literally evaporated from
the streets the last time. The last time wasn't It
wasn't didn't. The story go that Gladys turned around a
second time to wave goodbye and saw her at and
sall basically a couple of blocks away or something like that. Yeah,

(07:39):
but yeah, and so that was it. So yeah, she
just sort of vanished from the earth into the history books.
Over the following months, many people from across the country
claimed to a senior because after the news got out,
people were phoning in, phoning in tips from all around
the country claiming they had senior uh and the family
being rich, she had a lot of money, to actually
send detectives out to follow up on all these aids,

(08:00):
and so they were. They were mostly followed up on,
and none of them panned out unfortunately. So when she
didn't return home in the evening, her parents started calling
all of her friends looking for Nobody knew what had
happened to her. Now, now let me take a break here,
before we were launching more history and theories. Here's a
few things about her life just before the disappearance. And

(08:20):
I'm talking about these things now because they'll have a
little bearing later on the story. Okay, Number one, Dorothy
was interested in being a writer, and she had actually
written two short stories and submitted to a magazine called
The Clures, which I've never heard of, but they're probably
gone by now, and they were rejected, which left her
feeling a bit depressed apparently, which I just think I was.

(08:42):
Steph and I were chatting about this earlier, and I
was just thinking, how, I guess cute and funny it
is not to be, you know, the dismissive of this,
the impact that this can have on someone, But how
kind of cute and funny it is that she like
submitted to papers and they got rejected. And she was like, well, shucks,
my career as a writer is over. I know, it's

(09:03):
like a little bit more persistence, yeah, or you know,
maybe submit to another magazine that might be more interested
in your writing style. She was aiming for the top only.
But then again that you know, if you do the
reading the readings on this. Her family knew that she

(09:23):
was a writer, so there's all this talk about how
they were mocking her for trying to write. Mclars is
the only place that I think she submitted two to
them and one to another magazine something like that. Let's
think about nine. There are tons and tons of magazines
and newspapers and rags around that you can submit to.

(09:46):
And I'm not going to cast any aspersions on her,
but I think that maybe a bit of her social
status told her that she had to only go for
these particular ones. Then I am from the upper class,
so I must write for the New York You just
cut my teeth and I'll get my stuff published wherever

(10:07):
I can get it published, because that's the way. All
of the good writers in this this world have gone
about it well and currently got it published by crap people,
and eventually they got better and clearly her problem was
that I'm sure she was sending them on in under
her own name instead of a male pseudonym. That's another
good point, another point entirely. And I think the actually

(10:29):
women writers were kind of accepted back in those days.
They were not so much. There were some women writers.
But when did suffrage happen? When did the suffrage movement? Yeah,
so this is I'm sorry, the nineteen thirties. No, no,

(10:50):
it was the early nine hundreds, late eighteen hundreds. Okay,
so but this is this is when all that's happening,
and there's still a huge bit of massage is not
the right word. It's some of that, and it's it's
the old boys society, it's this and when clean the
house and that's children. And that's why Dorothy was a socialite,

(11:12):
because you know, I mean, you know, maybe maybe today
she'd actually be doing something useful back and back in
those days. And now you're rich and uh, you're not
expected to actually do anything like become a dentist or
a lawyer or anything like that, and that as a woman.
If she had said it in under the name of
Dawn instead of Dorothy, it might have gotten picked up

(11:36):
they're like, well, Dog's not that great of a writer,
but we'll publishing stuff. It's okay. Well, the thing about
it is, too, is I forget what the title of
one of the stores was. It was like there's something
Phoenix or the like. It was like the point in
the Flame. Yeah, and you know, I mean, if you
want exactly what, it should have a title like pork
Shop Hill. So what we're saying is she should have

(11:57):
been submitting to Harlequin. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, she gave up. Obviously.
I thought we didn't see the notes. It might have
been quite brutal and just like you know, dear miss Arnold,
thanks for submitting your excrescence. Please don't ever do that again.
You don't know, yeah, we I mean, and I don't
know if when they sent rejection letters, if they actually

(12:17):
sent it back all marked up. I mean, that crush somebody.
If somebody sent back your manuscript and they had taken
the time to red pen it. I don't think they did.
And I don't think they don't think they were even
return your manuscript. I think they just sent you a letter.
And but that's what I'm getting to the point of
the way that it's portrayed. At how strongly she took

(12:38):
the rejection. You would think that somebody had taken the
time to red pen all of her work and send
it back and say all of these things are wrong, no,
thank you that, or you know, she was the daughter
of a very wealthy family and was not used to
being said no to good point, good, very good point.
I mean just saying yeah. Or maybe she just a

(13:00):
really bad writer and she just couldn't perceive this. But anyway,
we're kind of getting off into the weeds too, all right,
So I mentioned her her abortive writing career. Also, what
else happened before she disappeared. Dorothy asked her father she
could move out of the house and get an apartment
in Greenwich Village where she could write and be all
artistic and stuff and some day meet Bob Dylan. Yeah

(13:22):
that that said no. It was twentieth century, so yeah,
he said no, And he said something on the order
of a good writer can write anywhere, so you can
write in your bedroom, honey. I felt like that's a
great answer, though, I mean, okay, we've already gone on
the weeds once, but I'm gonna stand up for dad

(13:43):
here a little bit. I already pay for all of
this kid's stuff, and I give her an allowance. And
by the way, living at home is free, and at
home is relatively free. But now you want to get
an apartment, which means you want me to pay for
set apartment and all of your bills. Well, yeah, and yeah,
and on top of that, you know, I think back
in those days that a woman moving out of the

(14:05):
house before she actually found a husband and got married.
I was going to say, in those days, if you
were not actively courting someone suitable to your parents liking,
you were probably not doing super well according to your parents. Yeah,
she was. She was actually courting somebody. We'll talk about

(14:26):
that a little bit here. But he was he was
not suitable parents Yeah, yeah, his his. Her dad did
make a remark on on the lines of he wouldn't
mind her dating more guys at all, just not worthless
guys or something. Let's talk about. Yeah, so, speaking of
that guy. In September nine, about three months before she disappeared,

(14:48):
Dorothy told her parents she was going to go visit
a former college classmate in Boston. She did go to Boston,
but she didn't hang much with her classmate, but she
spent the week with a guy named George Griscombe Jr. Yeah,
I think I think it's Griscom, might might be Grissom
or something like that. Let's go for Griscomb. Yeah. Uh.
He was from a rich family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They

(15:11):
were all proper about it. They stayed in separate hotels,
not just separate rooms, but separate hotels. Uh. So maybe
no copulation occurred, We don't know, but a lot of
the Dorothy Arnold diarists out there think that it did,
and it forms the basis for a lot of their
ideas about why she disappeared. So a little bit more
about him, George Grissom, Griscomb. She was seeing him, and

(15:34):
obviously there was something going on there, but Dorothy's father
basically forbade him from forbade her from seeing him because
even though he was rich, he came from a good family,
he was considered to be by Dorothy Mr. Arnold, to
be a worthless Yeah. I mean he was. He was
like forty something to right and living at home and

(15:54):
kind of just like living off of his parents money
pretty much. I wasn't earning anything for himself. Yeah. I
had heard that he Um, he went to law school
and had a law degree and was was working as
a contract lawyer, so doing contract law, but apparently not
working too terribly hard. And still you know, if you're
forty two and still living at home, you're really not

(16:16):
very ambitious, let's face. Yeah, well, sorry, you're not forty two,
that's true. Yeah, yeah, he wasn't not making it. Yeah,
thanks Joe. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Feel better about my
life now. I'm not going to go throw myself off
a bridge like Dorothy did. Oh no, wait, I'm sorry,
you're getting a ohet of the ending. No, she didn't

(16:38):
really throw herself up a bridge. So George was not
a suitable suitor, not in the eyes of Dad. Yeah. Anyway,
But the folks didn't actually find out about this Boston
thing with with Griscom until after the disappearance, when apparently
the Boston police discovered that Dorothy had pawned five hundred
bucks worth of jewelry to pay for her hotel room.

(16:59):
And this is going to observe that if copulation actually
had occurred, you would think that Griscombe would have paid
her hotel bill at least as a gentleman. You think
the classic well, you know, and and he didn't sound
like he had a lot of class. Well he might
have been on a short least. Maybe the folks didn't
give him a huge allowance. I think I think we
need to back up here a little bit. Yeah, I

(17:19):
think we've missed a salient point in this story, which
is so she disappeared and then now we're talking about
like some of the investigation that found Griscomb. But I
think what's important for people to understand is the cops
weren't brought in until three weeks later. Two weeks later.

(17:42):
It was weeks later because they were keeping it under
the rug. They called their lawyer, and the lawyer looked
for her. Not the lawyer didn't. He hired a private investigation.
He actually did a lot of look in too. But
but the thing is is that I think people don't
understand this. This didn't become a full fledged investigation right away.
She disappeared. They didn't say anything because there's that weird

(18:04):
thing that cops for a while, because you know, they
probably probably were thinking that there could be something scandalous here,
like they're gonna search for and then when she turns up,
she's going to be like, you know, shacked up in
a hotel room with some dude something like that. But
I want to keep they wanted to keep it quiet.
There was all kinds of rumors of of weird stuff
that they did. Somebody called the house or one of

(18:26):
her girlfriends called the house tonight she disappeared and her
mother said, yeah, she's here, Oh can I talk to her? Um, No,
she's asleep in bed with a headache or something. Yeah,
which is I mean, there's a lot of weird things
about this story, and I think that it's that natural

(18:47):
tendency of people with money to try to hide anything
that's going on. But it's it's an important point for
people to understand that it wasn't suddenly the police were
investigating her disappearance. There's a time lag here, whre was
always a detriment acord investigation. Yeah, well hell yeah, but
according to some accounts the time leg was most accounts
actually the time leg was six weeks before they talked

(19:09):
to the cops. Yeah, but they well, yeah, they supposedly
hired Pinkerton detect which is fairly famous agency as it
turns out. Yeah, although actually in a in a newspaper
account that I read of it. The newspaper account kind
of kind of made it clear that the police had
actually been brought in much earlier, like a week after. Yeah,

(19:30):
but he didn't. They didn't actually go public until about
six weeks after. Okay, See, when I was the articles
I came across, insinuated that there it had been multiple weeks,
but that might be just when it was released. It's
also hard to tell, you know, again, Stephen, I were
talking about this earlier, and we were talking about the
fact that, you know, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds,

(19:53):
all of these articles kind of just read like People magazine,
do you know. And it may be, you know, slight
differences in the writing styles things like that, but a
lot of it is just kind of, well, we heard
from a source that so and so knows that so
and so knows that so and so said, blah blah
blah blah blah. You know, it's it reads like a
gossip column kind of more than virtual I we're used to.

(20:16):
But I was going to talk about this in a
little bit, and there's this article from the Pittsburgh Press
that came out in nineteen fourteen that was a big
game changer for the whole thing, and it was like,
and the article contradicts itself, it's kind of incoming. Yeah, yeah,
it kind of kind of protradicts itself. But anyway, more
on that later. Alright, So, the Arnold family asked a
friend who was also a lawyer, whose name is His

(20:38):
name was John Keith, and they hired him to try
to find Dorothy so Keith. Dorothy Keith was a lawyer
and not a private eye, so I think I suspect
that they hired him because of attorney client privilege. That
would make sense. Yeah, they wanted to keep it low
and plus he was a family friend, so he could
be expected to keep it on the d L. So yeah,

(21:00):
and as we said, they didn't want publicity. They reportedly
didn't tell the police for six weeks, although maybe it
was less than that. But the police managed to keep
quiet about the whole thing. Although that's kind of surprising
because police even these days are kind of corrupted New York. Yeah,
they are not, like, you know, sell information to reporters.
But that would be a good reason to keep him out.

(21:21):
So anyway, John Keith came over to the house and
searched her room looking for clues apparently all of her
stuff was their clothes and everything else for the one
outfit she was wearing. Right, of course, yeah she had
to go out. She couldn't go out naked for christ sake.
Well yeah, unless she could, but yeah she didn't. That
would be looked upon with this favor. But he found
some burned papers in the fireplace, which everybody assumed were

(21:42):
just the manuscripts that ned had been rejected by the clures.
You know again, come on, Dorothy, you know, man up.
Send that to somebody else under a phony name, Send
a cracked man. They'd accept it. H they found brochurest cracked,
they probably would. What else is the one thing that

(22:05):
peaks a little interest is I have some brochures apparently
for steamliners to to Europe, because remember in those days
they didn't have seven seventy sevens. You had to actually
take a slow boat. Um. And I feel a lot
of speculation then and even today that she wanted to
run off and joined Griscom or somebody else and just
you know, start a new life. Maybe so John Keith

(22:27):
went checked hospitals, jails, borges in New York, Philadelphia and
Boston looking for her body or whatever. And he found nothing. Finally,
he suggested hiring the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which is still
in operation today and is a very famous historic investigation service.

(22:48):
Just throwing that out there. Oh yeah, Pinkerton Investigations, and
you will find some stuff. Yeah, I'm expecting them to
call us one of these days. We got a really
tough mystery here. We just can't crack. Since we solve everything,
they're not going to call us, because you know what's
gonna happen. It's Joe's gonna answer their phony school, dull

(23:10):
the uper Cobra, send me my money and hang up.
Well that's why we don't give Joe the phone. I
could just picture that though. Yeah, get up my get
up my magnifying glass. I see you see top of here.
It looks like nothing, but it's actually a chupa cobra track. Yeah, yeah, okay, anyway,
half of that. So anyway, the Pickerton's did more the

(23:33):
same They searched hospitals, more the same thing, you know,
except that they were able to cast a wider net
since they weren't one single attorney. Uh and actually, and
after they thought about the tickets and everything, they sent
some detectives to Europe to look for also, and so
they spent a lot of money on this. You know,
I gotta I gotta raise something that I was reading
the newspaper accounts and the stuff about the Pinkerton's, and

(23:58):
of course they couldn't send somebody to Europe to look
for her getting off the boat because they couldn't get
there fast enough. So I had to wire her description.
So I know what this woman looks like according to
a written description, and they find a number of women
who they think could look like her, but who say

(24:19):
they aren't her. Okay, well, one a written description of
somebody is very far flowing from what they actually look like.
And too if I walk up and I say, excuse me,
are you Dorothy and you go, no, dude, I'm Jane,
I'm from Illinois. Oh sorry, and let's move about your business.

(24:40):
How effective of a search means? Is this? Yeah? Yeah,
this this is very true. I mean, I don't know,
back in those days, they couldn't exactly email some photos.
That's that's what I mean, is that they send people
to look for people getting off the boats. It's like, um,
this doesn't seem like it's got a high probability of success.
I can see that. In Europe is kind of a

(25:01):
big place. Man, looking for people is really hard back
in those days. Looking for people to day is hard,
I know. And you can email stuff and like make
things viral, and I least people in crowds that I know. Yeah, like,
where were you? Um? Two feet in front of you? Really,
I was hiding from you. I never see you again,

(25:22):
obviously in plain sight. So they looked in Europe because
of the steamliner, right, were there any other reasons that
they found to look in New York? I mean, I'm
sorry in Europe? Yeah, Well there was one other guy. Yeah,
there was George Griscom, who it turns out I went
to Italy. I'm not sure exactly when he went over there,
but he was in Italy with his folks, tootling around,

(25:44):
so that his parents. Yeah, he was with his parents. Yeah.
He They Telegramedhi. Apparently they got ahold of him, and
he telegrammed them back and said he didn't know anything
about what happened to Dorothy and they were buying it.
So apparently mother Mary and her older brother John went
to Naples to confront him. No, not the mother's older brother,
but Dorothy's older yeah, exactly, her son John Kay. Yeah,

(26:07):
so he he denied it, and he gave them a
letter that he'd received from her in December apparently, although
in some accounts it says that he gave them a
like a sheaf of letters, Yeah, like a case of them. Yeah,
that was what I had read, yeah, or a packet
or something like that. But so the letter, this is
this last letter I mentioned that she had just gotten.

(26:28):
She just been rejected by McClure's again, that she was
kind of depressed over the whole thing, and that, of
course fields speculation that she may have committed suicide because
she was so down over this whole thing about not
getting your stories accepted. Yeah. And the hard thing with
christ is I spent a lot of time looking at him,
trying to pin down when he went to Italy, because

(26:51):
I thought that's what I was curious about too. He
murdered her, Yeah, and so I was like, Okay, well,
when the heck did he leave the country? Wasn't able
to find out. All you can ever find is when
he came back. Nothing says when he left, which either
means that a reporters just didn't think to ask, or
be he just never said how long he had been

(27:13):
on holiday. Yeah, I guess I got the sense that
he had been gone for a while, and finding out
that his he went with his family kind of makes
his story less suspicious to me. Yeah, because it wasn't
like he was escaping or anything like that. It also
sounds like if he was over there and she was
sending him a bunch of letters to the point where

(27:34):
he had a whole sheaf of them or a whole
packet um that he was over there for a while well,
and that he they had found letters in her possession
right that had a foreign so they could even so
I would, I would suspect that he had been overseas
for a while. There's been three months between their their

(27:56):
rendezvous in September and then when he disappeared in December.
That's a three month time span. If you write every
couple of days, that's going to be a stack of
letters after a couple of months. Yeah. Well, I I
was kind of assuming that that he was not hanging
onto every letter ever that she wrote, but just the
ones that he had arrived in Europe, and maybe the

(28:18):
ones were maybe the ones while he was in the
stage We're back home in a drawer. But I assumed
that the ones in that sheep were just once that
he'd received in New York. And let's let's be again, like,
let's reiterate the fact that those letters come over on ships. Yeah,
they take a while. It takes a while to get
there back. So if you have a couple, even just
like five or six, that that represents a couple of weeks. Yeah,

(28:43):
And and so he probably that last letter, probably got
that in who knows, mid to late December, maybe even January.
And by the way, this competition took place in January
two not two thousand, January nineteen eleven, yes, yeah, ok,
And she disappeared in December December. It seemed unlikely to
me that he was in the States at that point,

(29:03):
but you know, who knows. Okay, So anyway, we're back.
We're gonna resume the history just a one more little thing,
and then we're gonna talk about some theories about what happened.
So anyway, at about six weeks after the disappearance, the
police persuaded Frances Arnold her dad to hold a press conference,
and he did, and by this time he had been

(29:23):
convinced that she was dead, and so He said at
the press conference that he thought that she had been
murdered in Central Park and thrown into the reservoir, and
so everybody in town started drinking bottled water, just like
in Oregon. Yeah, and then uh, but but there was
one problem with that theory was, as the police pointed
out to him that it was you know, the temperature

(29:44):
was like twenty two degrees or twenty one degrees on
the day that she disappeared, so and the lake was
frozen over, and people have been skating on him. So
I'm not sure why he's so convinced. He was so
convinced that she had been murdered and much less thrown
him lake. He was so convinced that she was dead
that in his will, like she later no, she was

(30:04):
mentioned specifically that he left no provisions for her because
he had been sufficiently convinced that she was dead. He said,
in fact, I am intentionally not leaving anything for her
because in my mind, she's she's dead, which is like
a step extra, right. It's not only saying like, well,
my daughter is dead, so I'm just not going to

(30:26):
mention her. It's saying, you know, I'm going to take
the time out in my will to say, you know,
she's absolutely dead, So that to me is a little
pinky well, and and we're we're about to get into theories, right,
so let me just throw out this random one. And
this is fueled by my extensive knowledge of New York
socialite behavior for watching castle is that they do all

(30:51):
kinds of weird things to protect the family name. So
if he is so convinced that she's dead, how do
we know he didn't have her knocked Well, we don't
because if he's he's like, I'm just gonna make a provision.
She she was thrown into the reservoir. That's because that's
what the guy that I hired her to knock her
off for whatever offense he deemed so terrible to get

(31:13):
rid of her for he'd said he had done. And
then the guy goes to throw her in it's frozen over,
and then he drags her somewhere else. But I did,
you know, I mean, it's it's plausible like this guy
was from the start, he was dam here from the start.
It sounded like he was convinced she was dead. Well,
not from the start, I mean, but I think I

(31:35):
think as time went by, he just became convinced that
she was dead for god knows what reason, but he
it's and and again this is the newspaper recounts, which
makes it difficult. But he seemed to be one of
the first ones that I noticed saying I'm pretty sure
she's dead. Yeah. Now, maybe that's him being practical and
you know, detaching himself in the situation because his daughter

(31:57):
is missing and he's got no other choice but to
presume she's dead. Or maybe it's well I sort of know,
and let me just lean towards this theory and see
if anybody else follows me with it. Yeah, well he
and this well, this guy knew his daughter pretty well probably,
I mean, most people know their their family members really well.
So the options like she she like says, just left

(32:20):
just for whatever reason, we just ran away from home.
You know, he may have known her well enough to
know that that could never happen. Like for example, like
look at her behavior regarding her literary rejections. She didn't
have a lot of stick to itiveness. I mean, he
maybe understood that she was not. She didn't have what's
the word that I'm thinking about here, The results a

(32:42):
huspa to to actually go out and make a life
of her own. He probably figured that if she did
run away from home, she would have been back two weeks. Yeah,
she would be like me running away from home and
making it halfway across the block and sitting there being like,
why are they coming out? Yeah, this is such a
long walk on, I'm tired and hurry. She could have

(33:02):
There were some theories that she'd like, you know, had
an accident and had amnesia and she was in a
hospital somewhere, you know, and but obviously they'd searched all that,
so that possibility was ruled out, you know, and there's
not so there's not that many possibilities, and his mind
probably it's like, she's not she hasn't come back, and
I know she would be back by now. She was
still alive and it didn't have amnesia, so she's got
to be dead. And she didn't just up and die

(33:24):
because she was in good health. So that means you know,
New York there was there was it was a dangerous
place back in those days. It's very possible somebody, but anyway,
we're getting ahead of her. Okay, let's talk about theories.
There's a lot of stuff out there. There's actually still
even today, many years later, there's still people talking about this.
I got I want to do. There's a website called
web Slewice. I've seen those guys. I almost made it

(33:50):
to an entire thread and on for years. I mean
it was a long thread, and boy, I mean and
I found a few useful little nuggets in there, but
holy crap, I had the way it too, just a
ton of bills. I think that's why Steve and I
just don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I found that.
They I will read about the first dozen and then

(34:11):
I quit. Yeah. If I can find a link to
like three good things in a row, I will link
it and we'll read it. But pretty much other than that,
I just can't. Yeah, it's the issue with all forms.
But we've we've gone into that. Oh yeah, but anyway, Yeah,
there's a lot of theorizing on those, and I'll talk
a little bit about that later. But actually, as this

(34:34):
thread went on that I was reading too, it's like
the one theory that that came out, it seemed to
come out on top that more and more than seem
to believe in was our theory number one, which is
a Dorothy ran away to join the circus, not the circus,
but ran away. Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly to the point
where all these all these people are you know, lots

(34:55):
of loss. Of these people are saying, you know, I
just I just I hope she just really had a
wonderful life, you know, in YadA YadA, and it's like, dudes, really,
you know, I mean, and it's kind of a group
thing kind of thing, because there were other theories that
were kind of prevalent, and then and then more and
more of them seemed to trend to this whole that
she ran away to get away from her dominaring what
is this? Yeah, and so in this interpretation, she was

(35:16):
chafing on her domineering father, although it's not necessarily clear
that he was domineering. I mean, there's a lot there
was there stuff like on her Wikipedia page and there
was a lot of this on this particular webs loose
thread that her family was just they were completely mean
to her. They tormented her. That was the whole thing
about finding out about her writing. Yeah, just steering at

(35:36):
her and mocking at her. But there's not you know,
there's not much evidence in that. I mean, this is
stuff kind of like it gets to the point where
in this thread, for example, it built to this point
where they're saying, you know, it started out with all
they're teasing or they're mocking her, and then it got
to the point where they were so vicious towards her.
I don't blame her for leaving, you know. I mean,
they're all just they just convinced themselves of this. Well,
and the only the only bit of evidence that really

(35:58):
I've seen in researching this was that she stopped getting
mail for her writing about how she got a peel box. Yeah,
so that that family didn't see those letters come through. Yeah, okay,
Well if she had one rejection and then she got
a peel box, who's a teased her and she got
a second rejection? Okay, Well that just makes sense. You know,

(36:21):
my family doesn't need to know what I'm doing, well,
because they're family. That's the whole thing is, you're twenty
five years old, you're living at home, but you don't
want your parents and your family to be in all
your stuff, right, you know. And you know, so that
doesn't necessarily mean her family was being nasty to her. Yeah,
that whole theory really like screams to me. The kind
of demographic that comments on threads like this very often, right,

(36:46):
and I am not so far out of this demographic
of the like kind of like mid to late teens,
early twenties demographic where it's very easy to like play
the victim and like identify with that person who's like
being victimized, and like, oh man, her life was so hard,
it's like you forget that. Oh my gosh, she was
being given like two thousand, four hundred dollars a month

(37:09):
just for existing, you know, like she was living. Yeah,
maybe like her family was tormenting her, but probably not
tormizing her. Probably just like every family guys, where you're
just like the writer over there, the artist over there,
which my family does all the time. Everybody's family does.
That's part of a healthy family dynamic. But when you're

(37:30):
in your like mid to late mid to late teens,
early twenties, you see that as like, my family hates
mem is so hard. And I think with stories like this,
it's really easy to grab onto that one little tiny
nugget of like the way that family life could be
and ignore everything else and say, well, she was tormented,

(37:53):
God she left, Yeah exactly, that's right. They're reading each
other's postings, you know, and so it's sort of it's
sort of like a rumor, you know, it goes, it
just gets out of one person resist and somebody adds
just a little chainmailail. Yeah. So anyway, so there's this,
there's some series that people have out there that she
left to start a life of her own. Um and

(38:16):
other people say that she left to run off with
George Christcom or somebody else and start a new life.
But on the flip side, as you were saying, she
had a pampered life. Everything was taken care of, and
she had that big fat allowance and she didn't have
to spend that. If she wanted to buy a stuff,
she could put things on the family account. And as
we discussed earlier, she wasn't really like a stick to
her guns kind of lady exactly. You know, she ye

(38:40):
would have gotten into it and realized it was hard
and come back and said oops, just kidding. Yeah, And
even you know, I think that even if she had
left and actually made a good life for herself, unless
there was some hideous abuse so that I'm not never
not aware of, I think sooner or later she would
have contacted her family. I mean yeah. So that's why
I think this is just pure bos I don't think Yeah, alright,

(39:01):
the next theory botched abortion part one, Yeah, yeah, abortion,
Yeah alright. So the Pittsburgh Press published an article in
April ten, nineteen four. This is the kind of coherent
when we were talking about, right, semi coherent one one
that contradicts Yeah. Because of because of this article, a

(39:22):
lot of people are out there theorizing that Dorothy want
to an abortion clinic in Pittsburgh and died there due
to a botched abortion. A lot of people make a
lot about the location, which is in Pittsburgh, That's where
Griscomb lived at the time. He wasn't there, Yeah, and
but but the fact is, I don't know if he
was there. Now, he wouldn't have been. If received he
should have been, you should have been in Europe at

(39:43):
this well. But if he received a letter in December,
any time in December, really in Italy, it would have
had been sent early early December. It seems that he
could not have been there. Yes. Wait, wait, wait, wait,
we're making a presumption year that he kept the letter
in the envelope, that it arrived, and to prove that

(40:06):
he was there, I gotta be honest with you. I
think that people were suspicious enough of him that had
he been lacking the envelope or been able to otherwise
not able to prove. But these are pretty rich, dude,
I think he could have persuaded people to not be
looking for I. I opened the letter and I threw

(40:28):
the envelope into the fire because I just needed to
get to get the fire going. Well, I don't I
don't know exactly what kind of stationary she used, but
back in those days, and I have after my parents died,
I inherited a lot of the family archives and from
those days, back in the old old days, stuff that
want to cross the ocean was generally that they had this.

(40:48):
It was like this blue paper where the paper of
the letter itself folded up and made the envelope because
that's to save way, to save postage. And so of
course Dorothy didn't necessarily need to do that. She was rich,
she could actually have a letter in envelope. But back
in the old days, I can show you some of
those things. They it was like it just sort of
really super thin paper and it all folded together neatly

(41:09):
and made the envelope and the letter was the envelope,
and so we might have been that. Yeah, a lot
of people keep boblos. You know, you read the letter
and then you stick the letter back in the envelope
and you put it in your No, I'm guilty of that.
I admit I have lots of bills that are still
in their envelopes. Yeah. But anyway, but you know, I'm
not I'm not. I'm not saying I personally don't believe
that there's anything to make of the location in Pittsburgh.

(41:30):
But a lot of people think, whoa who and what's
what's the basis behind this? Again? Yeah, the Pittsburgh. The
Pittsburgh thing is because that's where Griscom lived. Yeah, that's
where his family. Yeah. So the basis of the whole
abortion thing is that a lot of people theorized that
during their week together in Boston, he got her pregnant. Yeah,

(41:51):
she needed to get an abortion. Remember that was in September.
So she's like, you know, a couple of months along, yeah, yeah,
and three months along, she's two or three months somewhere.
Three about when you know, yeah, you missed a few periods,
you know, I mean, you know, you miss one, Okay, like, fine, whatever,
I'm stressed. I'm depressed you missed for the last three weeks.

(42:13):
But yeah, but yeah support of Solidad's yeah yeah. And
then you know, I guess to you probably make the appointment.
Three you go to the appointment. I don't know, I
don't think. Yeah, I can't say yeah. Well so anyway,
I have no idea. Yeah. So the article included a
testimony from a local doctor. His name was LUTs and

(42:36):
he said that one of his female pages of LUTs.
Why is that making you laugh? Because I just made
a thirty Rock reference and now we're making another one inadvertently. Sorry, Yeah,
all right, what is what does dr Let's say? Well,
the doctor, doctor Lutts apparently apparently told the local d

(42:56):
A and disappeared in the paper that one of his
female patients had been to this abortion clinic and in
some in other parts of the paper actually actually has
two articles about this in the same day. And the
other article you call it a sanitarium. This one they
call it, like, you know, a clinic or whatever. Was

(43:17):
fairly interchangeable term. And yeah, no, sanitarium doesn't necessarily mean
what it means today in those days. Well, anyway, so
he said that one of his female patients told him
that she had been up there and that she had
seen Dorothy Arnold at this clinic, at this abortion clinic. Yeah,
and so this is years after, this is this is

(43:37):
three years after. It is three years after. Excuse me
about a little over three years after. But at the
same time, this newspaper article, and that's not underestimate the
ability of the press to misquote and distorage. But just
another paragraph down they do the whole woman patient of
Dr Lutts says that she saw. But then a paragraph

(43:59):
down they say the source of Dr Lutz's allegation is
that the doctor himself, the abortionist who ran the clinic
told him. Well, and then don't they later say that, um, oh,
actually the tip was from the assistant, the abortionists assistant. Well, yeah,

(44:19):
but that that actually goes back three years. I'll explain that.
I'll actually explain that. I'm confused. Yeah, I know, no,
it is confusing. I'm still because if you read, if
you read about this, it says that John Keith went
and investigated a sanitarium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she was
reported to be. Yeah, which is like fo away, Yeah,

(44:45):
that's a long way to go a walk in a day.
To me, if the if the clinics owner, the abortionist
whose name was CC Meredith, if he had actually had
Dorothy there and killed her in an abortion by botching,
by botching it, it it seems a little hard for me
to believe that he would tell somebody else that she
was there. Yeah, that's because that's an illegal operation to

(45:09):
start with. Well, let alone just talking about it. Well yeah,
because yeah, and it's not just you're not just going
to be if you kill somebody, You're not just gonna
be tried for illegal abortions. You're gonna be tried for murder. Yeah,
And so it's something you're gonna keep your mouth shut about.
You probably, I mean murder, and then all of the
like hundreds of illegal abortions you've performed, of course I
think at that point also account to murder. Yeah, yeah, probably,

(45:35):
or at least manslaughter. But interestingly about this particular little place,
this this clinic, is that John Keith had been there
three years before. Oh okay, yeah, lawyer, that's where he
had been there. That's what in this Philadelphia Press article.
The main article is about is about the fact that
the local police had rated this place and there was

(45:58):
a there was a clue this doctor. Yeah, they read
this place and they busted them and all that stuff,
and they had this art whole thing that the Dorothy
Arnold connection from this doctor Lutts, who had heard from
apparently two different sources that about but as a second
article where they talked with John Keith about his visit
three years prior to the same place. Yeah, that's what

(46:19):
you're talking about where he got a tip. So somebody
in the clinic apparently contacted a lawyer who contacted Keith
and she said that she was in a sanitarium in
some accounts, or or that she was, you know, in
this place. And it's that the story is confused. This
place alive in this place, and she said that somebody

(46:40):
was in their sanitarium who claimed to be Dorothy Arnold.
And you'll find this in some of the accounts that
are out there in the web, and they make it
look like it's a separate place, but it's the same place.
Interestingly enough, So anyway, John Keith had been there. Apparently
he had been he had received a tip from a
lawyer in Pittsburgh who was informed by a person in

(47:01):
this in this quote unquote sanitarium whose name turned out
to be or or r r and uh. And so
he came right straight away to investigate this. And when
he came into it, when he came in there, he
and he actually had to coerce Dr Meredith, the a
worseness who owned the place. He actually had to coerce
him a bit into letting him in to see him. Basically,
he threatened to show up with the chief of police

(47:21):
and her own whole bunch of reporters if he didn't
get a private tour, and so Dr Meredith was like, okay,
we'll give you to her. And so he shows up,
walks in the door, and spots the nurse Lucy or
Lucy or was one of the people who's mentioned in
this September fourteenth article about the raid. So and he
met and he's explicitly said in this article and said

(47:42):
her name so and she and he said, did you
are you the person who knows about Dorothy Arnold? And
she says yes, And he says, where is she? And
she points to this room. So he goes into the
room and looks at this woman that's in there and says,
and it comes back, I says, that's not her. So,
so did she actually tell you? Because she had said
that this woman was saying she was Dorothy Arnold, and

(48:02):
so he said, did she really tell you that? And
this woman said, well, no, she didn't actually tell me that,
but I didn't think you could come otherwise. But I
think she looks just like Dorothy Arnold. Yeah, so it
went all the way out there. That was Yeah. But okay,
so why is this not a good theory because it
was a terrible lead. Yeah, that one. Well, first of all,

(48:25):
the reason the reason this is a ludicrous theory is
Pittsburgh is three miles away from Manhattan. So you're not
gonna you know, you're not going to cover that kind
of ground in a quick afternoon. You're not gonna say
I went shopping. Yeah, hell no, okay, okay. There are
some people who have said that they believed that the
Arnold family knew that she was with child and needed

(48:46):
to go get it taken care of, and they sent
her away to go get taken care of. So they
knew she was in Pittsburgh. But then why would why
would they be calling all of her friends that night
when she doesn't come back. Also, why would they sund
her to Pittsburgh. It's New York. Surely there's a reputable abortionist.
I'm sure there were plenty of unreputable people doing that

(49:06):
kind of work. Sure, but I'm sure that, like, you know,
as reputable as the people in Pittsburgh are, you can
find in New York. Yeah, it's New York City. That's
one of the reasons that a lot of people like this.
Whole theory though, is that because Chriscombe lived there and
he was supposedly a wealthy playboy, then he knew a
good place to go, you know. So that's that that
sealed that. Okay, the next reason why this is bs
um and this just kind of like it's tough on

(49:29):
the next one too. But the letter, the letter that
or letters that George Chriscombe actually handed over to the
family from what he was in Europe. So she would
if she was, if she was knocked up, she would
be talking about that in those letters. Do you think
he wants to open that can of worms? But here's
what I will say is that I'm not sure if

(49:50):
she would talk about that if she were just going
to get it taken care of. You, as a young woman,
think there would be a discussion back I would or
I don't know if that's true. If she had just decided, Nope,
this isn't the right time for me. My parents are
not going to allow me to marry this man. I
clearly cannot have this baby. If she had just made
that choice on her own and gone and solicited some

(50:14):
kind of shady abortion back alley abortion, you know, this
opened the can of worms. Ideally, Yeah, there would have
been a conversation. But is there always no? Well, maybe not,
but I think there probably would have been, which is
why I kind of felt like, you know, he probably
but but but you're right, I mean, maybe maybe there
was no mention. Uh, the next reason the tip that

(50:36):
John Keith received from the attorney that was received from
Lucy or the abortionist assistant. So that absolutely makes no
sense because if Dorothy Arnold had come, they're been killed
through abosched abortion and the body is disposed of. Well,
by the way, did I mention they have huge furnaces
in the bottom of this house when they supposedly burned
the bodies of the women who died. Yeah, so I

(51:00):
you are you gonna actually find a way to get
a friend and lawyer for the family out to your
clinic to look around. That is absolutely absurd unless she
died much later from unknown complications. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe,
but again, I mean I'm on your side with this one. Yeah. Yeah,
that was. That one's completely ludicrous. Anyway, our next theory

(51:20):
botched abortion part two. So in this one, a convicting
fellow named Edward Glenora's this is actually the most colorful
story or theory in this entire thing. Yeah. Yeah. He
said that he was in prison at the time, but
he said that he was paid two hundred fifty dollars
to bury the body of a young woman in December
nineteen ten. He said that acquaintance hired him to drive

(51:41):
a woman from a home in New Rochelle. New Marcelle
is about fifteen miles northwest of Dorothy's home. It's on
Long Island Sound. It's supposed to drive her from New
Rochelle to we Hawk in New Jersey, exactly the wife.
So they have a new New Ruschelle and Edward Glenn
Ris and his the guy that hired him. His name

(52:02):
is Little Louis, were met by two men and one
was named such a New York name, Louis So they
were got by two men, one named Doc and another
that he described as a quote wealthy, well dressed man
unquote who reportedly matched George Christcolm's description. And you know,

(52:23):
I'm not buying any of this, but we'll talk about
that later. So they loaded this unconscious woman into the car,
drove her to a house in we Hawk in New Jersey,
and then Little Louis told Glenorius during the drive that
the woman was Dorothy Arnold. Glenora said he recognized her,
and then the next day Little Louie contacted him again
to you quote unquote finished the job. So they went

(52:43):
back to we Hawking. Doc told the man that the
woman had died at that home in we Hawk and
during an operation, so Little Louis and Glenora's drove the
woman's body back to the home in New Rochelle wrapped
her body the sheet, buried her in the cellar. Wait.
I thought they buried her in a cethern west Point
accounts very okay, Okay, this is like that's that's That's
why I'm asking because I know that this is one

(53:06):
of those things where he gets kind of kind of
money in the telling. Yeah, I know, they actually dug
up sellers and homes in the area, but couldn't find
any human remains. Uh So, anyway, why is this bs okay?
Number one, I don't think she was pregnant to begin with.
I mean number so number two, I mean she might
have been, but uh new ourselves about fifteen miles northeast

(53:28):
of the family home. She could have she could have
jetted up there, left at home. Hey, I'm gonna go shopping.
Jet up to New ro show, get your abortion, get back.
But instead she walked the other direction. She walked south,
got chocolate and got chocolate, bought a book, and you know,
and hung out. So obviously, boy, couldn't she have gotten
a right after that point? She could have? But the

(53:48):
thing about it is is like you're kind of pushing it.
You got to be home by dinner time, and the
last time you're seeing is when you run into your
friend outside the bookstore two pm. So it's like, and
don't forget, don't forget. I mean, they didn't have much
in the way of transportation of these days. Cars were
a really new things. Oh yeah, they were slow and terrible.
They were like what five probably a little better than that,

(54:09):
but she probably would have taken a horse and buggy
at this time, but you know, and so fifteen miles
and a horse and buggy, that's a little bit of
time compared to jumping in your car today. But well,
I can I can just see though, and I'm just
playing Devil's adcate here. But she says, I'm gonna do
this and then I'm gonna go, And she's got a

(54:29):
terrible sense of time. I mean, we all know those
friends who say, it'll only take me this much time
to do this. So I'm going to do these other
things in the morning, and I'll be at year place
by eleven o'clock and then they show up at three
in the afternoon because they have no sense of time
and they cannot judge how long things take. So she

(54:50):
might have thought, well, i'll go get a book so
that I have something to read on the way there
and the way back, and it'll be fine. And if
I late, well I'll just say that I'm ill and
I had to stop because i didn't feel good. Yeah,
I mean, I'm obviously this is a conjecture, but I'm
just looking at it as well. Maybe this could be

(55:13):
the thought process that was involved. If she really was pregnant.
Want you again, I'm not positive she was, but I'm
just saying, if this was, this is a possibility, and
that seems I know tons of people who do that
crap all the time. But yeah, and and I know
people like that too, but this is a this is
a pretty important thing. This is a big deal. You know,

(55:33):
you're knocked up and and and this is your salvation.
You're gonna go get this abortion and everything. It's gonna
it's gonna save you from being publicly publicly humiliated and
cast up by your family. Pretty huge steal. That's something
I'm sure she would try to be on time for.
I don't think she'd screw around for hours walking around
Manhattan buying chocolate and books. Don't you think she might
have been making a day of it? Yeah, I mean,

(55:54):
not not to be aloof about what she was doing,
but she might have said, well, I'm gonna do these things,
so at least I do these things and then I
will go take care of that, or trying to cover
her tracks knowing. Okay, so here are the two places
or you know, two best places that I have family
counts right that aren't near this clinic that I'm going

(56:17):
to so it doesn't look like I'm going to this
clinic or this house or whatever. You know, I have
an account at this chocolate place. It's a couple of
miles away. And then I can go buy a book
and oh I ran into a friend. How convenient, Oh
my goodness. And then you know, yeah, I mean, you
know either way. Look, let's let's remember this is horse

(56:40):
and Buggy days. Horse and Buggy goes what's five six min?
Is it? Is it? Horse and Buggy days? They were
the very yeah, the car there there were actually people actually,
believe it or not, Henry Ford was not making model
ts at this time. Yet the first thing that came
out kind of mass produced was Oldsmobile. Was that producing cars,

(57:01):
but not huge numbers. Uh, They're just weren't. And there
were a lot of small manufacturers making weird clap tropy
kind of not everybody was making their own Oh yeah,
but but no, mostly it was horse and buggy, And
so you have to expect that if she had caught
a horse and buggy, she had to go all the
way to New Rochelle from her place which is now

(57:22):
after all her miles of walking now with Laura Manhattan,
she had actually added miles to her to her journey
to New Rochelle by walking in the direction that she did.
It's going to take quite a while to get there.
And then I don't know how long abortions I spent
so long since I've had an abortion, I can't remember
how long it took. That was terrible, absolutely terrible. I
guess I just kept thinking cars because it sounded like,

(57:43):
um gosh, the felon. Yeah, he said they were they
were supposed to drive her. But driving back in those days,
you know, it means driving in a buggy or a
wife model. Were like, okay, all right, I guess I
just have this yeah, view of new view of what
cars are. So what what what are the other non
abortion theories. Let's let's get to do a different theory? Okay,

(58:07):
another Another theory is suicide? Another depressing to more depressing,
thank you. You know. That's the thing about it is,
I like one reason that so many people are in
love with the whole idea that she ran away to
to start, because that somehow the nicest theory. Yeah, every
everything else and everything else is kind of horrible. The

(58:27):
last the last minutes have just been joying. That's getting
some more joy. Obviously, if I could choose a fate
for Dorothy, I would I would have her runaway and
have a happy life someone you know, But I don't
think it worked out that way personally. Well, okay, what
is this people believe, you know, based on based on
the fact that she had been rejected. Of course, what

(58:48):
was said in a letter to George Griscomb about how
she was kind of down and dejected because her letter
her essays had been rejected. And even John Keith, the attorney,
said years afterwards it that he believed that she committed
suicide because of her literary failures and because she felt
so she got rejection from two different Yeah, she got

(59:10):
But you know, I think I think it's this is
this is possible, but I don't think it's necessarily true
because number one, the body was never found, which is
still possible. I mean, she could have jumped off the
Brooklyn Bridge and her body drifted out to see was
never seen again. Maybe. Of course, there was lots of
foot traffic on the and and horse and buggy traffic
on the Brooklyn Bridge in those days, so she probably

(59:33):
wouldn't have been able to jump off that bridge or
any other bridge without being certainly not at mid day
or or mid afternoon. And the other thing is that
not the people who saw like where of course your
families are before she left and her friend Gladys King
saw her, none of and none of them noticed anything
unusual or depressive about her. And so that seems to

(59:55):
be the sort of thing that is really really open
to suggestion. Right. If but he says, oh, well, maybe
she jumped off a bridge, they'll be like, oh, she
did seem a little depressed. She even seemed like the
asiest depressed. Yeah, although you know, again, on the other hand,
people who are about to do things like that oftentimes

(01:00:17):
you kind of hear descriptions of them as being like
really liberally. Yeah, maybe she felt like shed made this
decision into like that. But my theory is that is
that maybe she was depressed, but she was shopping and
she's you know, that just made her happy. She was
a shopoholic. Ultimately, she was shopping and couldn't find the
right size and it made her even more depressed. Yeah,

(01:00:38):
that's probably what she found. This beautiful smock god just
going downhill, you too, This is spiraling out of control? Yeah,
come on, what is what what's what's the next? They
because it's got to be better than the theory. Okay,
so she was abductive. Abductive? Yeah, you are no longer

(01:01:00):
allowed to pick your own stories. I mean, I don't
like this theory either, but it's it's plausible, and actually
I find it most plausible at all, because I managed
to stumble across some crime stats from the New York
City Police Department from those years from nineteen ten. Yeah,
I luck, I just lucked upon it. And of them,
in the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Richmond, which

(01:01:23):
is what we now call Staten Island, thousands of people
I can't remember the number that to like four or
five thousand people were reported missing just in nineteen ten alone.
And of these three men, two sixteen women were never
heard from again. So that's five people that disappeared permanently.
And so some of them, I'm sure it ran off

(01:01:44):
to join the circus or whatever, or you know, left
the area and just said signor and everybody they knew
there was no reason to maintain ties. Yeah, and so
I'm showing. So I'm sure plenty of those people um lived,
but but a substantial chunk wound up in shallow graves
and at the bottom of the river. That's what I think,

(01:02:04):
and I'm trying to remember, and guys help me out
and correct me if I'm wrong. Is weren't opium den's
kind of a thing at that time frame or is
that earlier in history? I mean, I can guess it
was like the eighteen seventies and eighties. Maybe kind of

(01:02:25):
the nineties, yeah, you know later. But there's a lot
of drugs these days that they this is just a
weird cyclical thing of they're popular and everybody does them,
and then they fall out of fashion. Then they start
coming back. Maybe they're not as big, but you know,
it's uh, there's a lot of stuff that you heard

(01:02:46):
about the news that drug Yeah, I gotta say that.
You know, when drugs fall out of fashion, that doesn't
mean everybody stops doing it. Right. For example, is not
nearly as big as it used to be, but it's
still still. I just wonder, is you know opium dens
were a thing where it was known that heroin, for example,
or heroin they would know they would go they go

(01:03:07):
to this place and they would do it and they
would stay there while they were quote unquote experiencing their
high and they leave, but occasionally they just o D
and they wouldn't wake back up. And who's to say
that this girl didn't have something some kind of habit
like that, because she's got the money for it. So
she goes out on a quote unquote shopping trip, and

(01:03:28):
this time she didn't go charge anything in the family
because she didn't find anything that day. But she just
she went to that place and chung at all day,
came home and and no talent, she did not. But
then she comes home and she does what she does.
But one day she does done come home from it.
But I'm not saying that this girl had a drug habit.
But I'm just looking at well, if if we're going

(01:03:48):
to say that you know, it's suicide or death by
some other means, well it's possible that o D. Because
that's the kind of thing that happened at that time
as well. That happened time, right, is like the kidnapping
of white women to sell into slavery process. Say yeah,
I mean across dreaming, that's the thing that still happens today.

(01:04:09):
But you know that certainly happened. I mean, let's be honest,
like Oregon has the Shanghai tunnels, like those are like
later than that time period that it's happened for so
long in our history than like who knows. I mean,
there's so many different options that could have happened to
this woman. Yeah, so I'm gonna like, I'm gonna say

(01:04:30):
one thing against the opium slash heroine theory is that
she was she was well known around town, and so
she had to really seriously worry about getting found and busted.
I mean, maybe she had to have it, and I
to how many Hollywood stars do we discover had a
problem for years? Yeah, I just don't think she would

(01:04:50):
have gone to an opium den. She might have had
a connection somewhere. But I hate to talk about this
more because I didn't. But I'm not I'm not saying
I'm saying wrong and I'm run yeah yeah, no, no no,
I just and I hate it because so many of
these serious kind of track her names through the mud
an abortion. Oh yeah, she got, she got, she was
a heroin addict and all that stuff. But it's possibility.

(01:05:14):
I mean, I think the simplest, easiest thing, though, really
is just that there was a lot of street crime.
Somebody just knocked her on the head, robbed her, possibly
raped her, and then murdered her. There could have been
one of those. It could have been one of those
deleos where she's like, do you know who I am?
And then and now and she says, I'm a wealthy
social and I'm famous around town, and then suddenly the

(01:05:34):
guys like, oh crap, I was just gonna rob you
in Rapion. Now I gotta kill you because I mean,
they're gonna take this stuff seriously. And so it could
have been something like that, but who the hell knows.
I mean, I personally hope she ran off to join
the circus and had a happy life. I really do.
I really hope that she had a happy life with
the Dancing Bear. Yeah, and that's all there was, too,

(01:05:55):
became yeah, I you know, I I sincerely hope so too,
because like what other options? Because a really nice one
of the most depressing shows we've ever done, And I
Am not letting him pick his own stories anymore more.
From now on, you have to run him by us.
That I didn't. I did run it by you, as

(01:06:17):
I recall, Yeah, in about all of two seconds, oh
this and she disappeared. Okay, that's fine. We're not running by,
We're just like we're vetting. Yeah, yeah, I I forget
it was I had her and some other disappearing person.
It's like or no, some other person who's mysteriously well,
which one sounds more interesting to you? And so go
with Dorothy? So yeah, sutly, well, truly, I just wish

(01:06:40):
she ended up in oz Yeah, with her dog Toto. Yeah, Toto, Yeah, Toto.
It's actually Toto. I think that actually actually too Toto
spelled spelled tote, but she as pronounced it Toto. What's
the other reason I hate that movie? Yeah, she mis
pronounced the dog's name. Yeah. So anyway, it's so favorite

(01:07:01):
theories anybody the Circus, the Circus? I really, I like,
I hope it's the circus. I really I wanted to
beat the circus at this point, I think that it's
you know, it seems like it's there's so many different
things that really could have happened to her. Yeah, it's
really no use. I mean, I personally think that the
odds are that it was random street crime. Yeah. And
the only reason that this makes this like a high

(01:07:23):
profile unsolved mr right is that she was like a socialite,
you know, like this happens the same Yeah, it did
well apparently from all the disappearing people in New York
in that year. We're talking about this one because she
was rich. Yeah, anyway, sad story. But anyway, but I
will say for the record that I'm I'm pretty convinced

(01:07:44):
that there were there was no botched abortion. I don't
think it was that. I mean, I think it's pretty convincing.
I don't think she was pregnant, so at least we're
not dragging her through the mud, right Yeah, yeah, hopefully.
All Right, So anyway, saying Aara Dorothy, that ends our mystery.
Another successful us to resolved and all kinds of we're
just so the listeners know Steve and I are both
giving him the hall what pin story? Alright, said I'm

(01:08:11):
gonna cry it was a pathetic sense is. Yeah, you're
probably wondering where you can find our fabulous stuff and
download it, although that's kind of stupid because you're already
you've already done it. But you can find us on
iTunes and you can download our stuff off of our
website also Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh, you can

(01:08:33):
set an email at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
You can also get a time to download us and
put us on your iPod. You can stream us directly
using Stitcher, all right, and you can find us and
of course like us, like the hell out of us
on Facebook. All right. Now it's time for that your
favorite part of the episode, which is listener email. So
today we've got an email from Crarry I won't tell

(01:08:56):
you his last name, and and Crairy. As you know,
most of most of our emails are from people who
talk about how they adore us and they wish they
were us and stuff like this. Yeah, Creary is not
I'm gonna I'm not gonna call this email negative, but
it's a slightly critical one. And well it's it's it's
it's it's an honest conversation. It's a thoughtful, it's good,
good email. And and I'm I'm glad that Crearry wrote

(01:09:18):
to us to tell us his concerns. So, going back
to the Montak episode the Montalk Project, let me quote
from from Clary's email. In the discussion of the quote
going back in time to write the Civil War nonsense,
someone I think it was Joe, and I think I
remember saying this. I checked it. Yeah, I mentioned that
slavery would have given way to industrialization. I apologize as

(01:09:42):
and this is still Crary talking as one should never
argue counterfactuals, but it's a subject a bit near to
my heart. I'm gonna skip a little bit here. However,
I think such hand waving as slavery is historical, as
an historical force simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And
I probably I apologize to for you, but it's kind
of a long email, so I'm not gonna read everything
work for word back to your email with Creary. While

(01:10:02):
the institution of slavery may well have evanesced in the
face of the modern capitalist state, we should remember that
there were some in the South who opposed this very
ideal of the modern economy. And that's very true on
this Vegan, not not Crearry talking in America and in Europe,
there were lots of people who are very opposed to
the system and the capitalism, and a lot of those

(01:10:22):
people are still with us today. And so it wasn't
an inevitability. And so Creary is quite correct in saying that.
So let me skip ahead. It's and also the spector
Crearry also even slavery word to go. This does not
mean the legacy. Would we still live with the legacy
today in this country? And he goes on a little
bit um and I'm not so I'm not going to
quote anymore, but not your email is not worth quoting

(01:10:45):
and its entirety because it's a very good, thoughtful emil.
It's a very good, lengthy email. Yeah, And I think
that's that's the hard part, is it. It's a it's
a very lengthy email, has a lot of good historical points.
It makes some very good points. Yeah. I think you're right.
It's it's a good, it's good email. Yeah, yeah, no,
it's it's it's good. It's great actually, and and uh, well,
I thank you for bringing it up because I think

(01:11:05):
I think that Crairy, if you saw this what I
said that way, then probably some other people did. So
I really thank you for bringing it up and giving
me the chance to talk about what I really meant.
I think what I said was capitalism was eventually going
to wipe out slavery. Industrialization. Industrialization would wipe out slavery,
which I think it would have. Um that does That's

(01:11:25):
not the same as saying that I think that whether
the South versus the North winds is six and one
half a dozen of the other. I didn't mean that
at all. And obviously it's a good thing that the
North one if you're if you're a slave, you know,
and the question of whether you're set free today versus
fifty years from now, well that's pretty huge. So and so, yeah,

(01:11:46):
I mean, and at the same one, another reason I
sort of said what I said is that I don't
think that post Civil War things really improved that much
for black folks in America. It really took a long time.
Well yeah, uh oh, yeah, I mean there was segregation
and Jim Crow I mean in lynchings and all kinds

(01:12:07):
of stuff. I mean, you know, I mean, a hell
of a lot of the slaves wound up going back
and working on the same plantations they've been slaves on,
except as chaircroppers, so they're still technically free. They were
better off. But anyway, I'm not that's again, I'm not
saying six and one half doesn't the other. It's a
great thing with the North one. And uh anyway, but
like I said, Gray, thanks a lot for the email.
I appreciate the mention of all this stuff. Yeah, this

(01:12:28):
is something that we don't really realize, you know, because
we all I've known each other long enough to that
like we know what we meantally, you know, we said
something like that, We're like, oh, yeah, totally, we totally
get what you mean. And then we realize I mean, yeah,
everybody knows that. For all our listeners to yeah, feel
free to write emails like this. Don't feel like you

(01:12:48):
need to just write in and send us love letters.
I mean, you can be critical, you can you know,
you can tell us how this, how much we discussed
you I don't know. I I We have gotten stuff
in the past that have been constructive criticism, and that's
that is valid stuff to send us. And we have
gotten a number of it in the past, and we've
only benefited from it. It's only been something that has

(01:13:12):
helped make us better because there's weird little ticks that
we have done or things that we have said, and
off air folks may not realize it, but we've had
long discussions of figuring out how to make sure certain
things happen that are better for the show. So this,
this is a very positive thing. And now we know
not to talk about the Civil War. No, I mean,

(01:13:34):
you know, we don't know, like you know, there's so
much that we're a fairly new podcast. We're like a
year in. We do this for fun, and you know
we're getting a fairly good response. We're occasionally yeah, and
so it's great that you guys let us know when
we do things, because you know we're we're in a bubble. Yep,

(01:13:59):
We're a little little bit of a bubble. Okay. So anyway,
that's it again, Crairy, thanks a lot for your email,
which I again think was very thoughtful and intelligent and
appreciate it and feel free to write us again too. Alright,
so for it thinking sideways the podcast. This is good night, really,
that's what you're gone. I can't, I can't, all right, Okay,
Well this is Steve and I'm just gonna say goodbye. Hey,

(01:14:22):
hey guys, why do you white girls travel in um
packs of odd numbers? Because they literally can't even just
like I can't right now, Please somebody turn out the recording.
Oh so, what did the five fingers say in the
face slap