Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

I

THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA

Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of June, 1874, two men in a shabby-covered buggy stopped their horse under the venerable elms of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepy suburb of Philadelphia, with its grave-faced revolutionary houses and its air of lavendered maturity. All about these intruders was historic ground. Near at hand was the Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washington and his tattered command in their famous encounter. Yonder stood the old Morris Mansion, where the British commander stood cursing the fog, while his troops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuous Agnew fell before a backwoods rifleman, and there Mad Anthony Wayne was forced to decamp by the fire of his confused left. Not far away the first American Bible had been printed, and that ruinous house on the ridge had once been the American Capitol. The whole region was a hive of memories.

Strangely enough, the men in the buggy gave no sign of interest in all these things. Instead, they devoted their attention to the two young sons of a grocer who happened to be playing among the bushes on their father’s property. The children were gradually attracted to confidence by the strangers, who offered them sweets and asked them who they were, where their parents were staying, how old they might be, and how they might like to go riding.

The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary, tried to respond manfully, as his parents had taught him. He said that he was Walter Ross, and that his companion was his brother, Charlie, aged four. His mother, he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her older daughters, and his father was busy at the store in the business section of the settlement. Yes, that big, white house on the knoll behind them was where they lived. All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled off to his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into their buggy he demurred. The men got pieces of candy from their pockets, filled the hands of both children, and drove away.

When the father of the boys came home a little later, he found his sons busy with their candy, and he was told where they had got it. He smiled and felt that the two men in the buggy must be very fond of children. Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmless incident of that forgotten summer afternoon was the prelude to the most famous of American abduction cases and the introduction to one of the abiding mysteries of disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftness came soon to be a matter of almost worldwide notoriousness—a case of kidnapping that stands firm in popular memory after the confusions of fifty-odd years.

On the afternoon of July 1, the strangers came again. This time they had no difficulty in getting the children into their wagon.[1] Saying that they were going to buy fire crackers for the approaching Fourth of July, they carried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and Richmond Streets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross was given a silver quarter and told to go into a shop and buy what he wanted. At the end of five or ten minutes the boy emerged to find his brother, his benefactors and their buggy gone.

[1] Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial, the following year, that he had seen the men twice before, but this seems unlikely.

Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from his home in the toils of a strange city, stood on the curb and gave childish vent to his feelings. The sight of the boy with his hands full of fireworks and his eyes full of tears, soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peacock finally took charge of the youngster and got from him the name and address of his father. At about eight o’clock that evening he arrived at the Ross dwelling and delivered the child, to find that the younger boy had not been brought home, and that the father was out visiting the police stations in quest of his sons.

In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnapping was not immediately conceived, and it even got a hostile reception when the circumstances forced its entertainment. The father of the missing Charlie was Christian K. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was popularly supposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of a prosperous business at Third and Market streets, and master of a competence. His flourishing trade, the big house in which he lived with his wife and seven children, and the fine grounds about his home naturally caused many to believe that he was a man of large means. In view of these facts alone the theory of abduction should have been considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recited the details of his adventure with the men in a faithful and detailed way, telling enough about the talk and manner of the men to indicate criminal intent. Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit of the strangers. Finally, the manœuver of deserting the older boy and disappearing with his brother should have been sufficiently suggestive for the most lethargic policeman. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took the skeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselves in the following advertisement, which I take from the Philadelphia Ledger of July 3: