Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

“Lost, on July 1st, a small boy, about four years of age, light complexion, and light curly hair. A suitable reward will be paid on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets.”

The advertisement was worded in this fashion to conceal the fact of the child’s vanishment from his mother, who was not called from her summer resort until some days later.

The police were, however, not long allowed to rest on their comfortable assumption that the boy had been lost. On the fifth, Mr. Ross received a letter which had been dated and posted on the day before in Philadelphia. It stated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the writer, that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look for him through the police, and that the father would hear more in a few days. The note was scrawled by some one who was trying to conceal his natural handwriting and any literate attainments he may have possessed. Punctuation and capitals were almost absent, and the commonest words were so crazily misspelled as to betray purposiveness. The unfortunate father was addressed as “Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was later contracted to “Ros.” This missive and some of those that followed were signed “John.”

Even this communication did not mean much to the police, though they had not, at that early stage of the mystery, the troublesome flood of crank letters to plead as an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter of fact, this first letter came before there had been anything but the briefest and most conservative announcements in the newspapers, and it should have been apparent to any one that there was nothing fraudulent about it. Yet the police officials dawdled. A second message from the mysterious John wakened them at last to action.

On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longer communication, unquestionably from the writer of the first, in which he was told that his appeal to the detectives would be vain. He must meet the terms of the ransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be the murderer of his own child. The writer declared that no power in the universe would discover the boy, or restore him to his father, without payment of the money, and he added that if the father sent detectives too near the hiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing the doom of his son. The letter closed with most terrifying threats. The kidnappers were frankly out to get money, and they would have it, either from Ross or from others. If he failed to yield, his child would be slain as an example to others, so that they would act more wisely when their children were taken. Ross would see his child either alive or dead. If he paid, the boy would be brought back alive; if not, his father would behold his corpse. Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified by the insertion of these words into the Ledger: “Ros, we be willing to negotiate.”

Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the Charlie Ross terror burst upon Philadelphia and surrounding communities the following morning in full virulence. The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-going road, searched the trains and boats, went through all the craft lying in the rivers, spread the dragnet for all the known criminals in town and immediately began a house-to-house search, an almost unprecedented proceeding in a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatory with every fresh edition. At once the mad pack of anonymous letter writers took up the cry, writing to the police and to the unfortunate parents, who were forced to read with an anxious eye whatever came to their door, a most insulting and disheartening array of fulminations which caused the collapse of the already overburdened mother.

In the fever which attacked the city any child was likely to be seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent, to the nearest police station, there to answer the suspicion of being Charlie Ross. Mothers with golden-haired boys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted to Christian Ross in an unending stream, demanding that he give them written attestation of the fact that their children were not his, and the poor beladen man actually wrote hundreds of such testimonials. The madness of the public went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice the age and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged before the officials by unbalanced busybodies. Little boys with black hair were apprehended by the score at the demand of citizens who pleaded that they might be the missing boy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were brought before the scornful police, and some of the self-appointed seekers for the missing boy had to be driven from the station houses with threats and blows.

Following the command of the child snatchers with literal fidelity, Mr. Ross had published in the Ledger the words I have quoted. The result was a third epistle from the robbers. It recognized his reply, but made no definite proposition and gave no further orders, save the command that he reply in the Ledger, stating whether or not he was ready to pay the twenty thousand dollars. On the other hand, the letter continued the ferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughed at the police efforts as “children’s play,” and asked whether “Ros” cared more for money or his son. In this letter was the same labored effort to appear densely unlettered. One new note was added. The writer asked whether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousand pounds for the ransom of yu child.” Either the writer was, or wanted to seem, a Briton, used to speaking of money in British terms. This pretension was continued in some of the later letters and led eventually to a search for the missing boy in England.

In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Ross relied absolutely on the police and put himself into their hands. He asked how he was to reply to the third letter and was told that he should pretend to acquiesce in the demand of the abductors, meantime actually holding them off and relying on the detectives to find the boy. But this subterfuge was quickly recognized by the abductors, with the result that a warning letter came to Mr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was told that he was pursuing the course of folly, that the detectives could not help him, and that he must choose at once between his money and the life of his child.

Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors to yield to the demands of the extortioners, and several men of means offered him loans or gifts of such funds as he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he signified his intention of arriving at a bargain, and the mysterious John wrote him two or three well-veiled letters which were intended to test his good faith. At this point the father and the abductors seemed about to agree, when the officials again intervened and caused the grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisement that he would not compound a felony by paying money for the return of his child. But this stand had hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful anxiety caused another change of front.