Lured Away At The Park: The Abduction of Hattie Jackson

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Friday, July twenty first, nineteen sixty one, was ranked the
fourth hottest day in Washington, d C that year, coming
in at ninety three degrees, and so the children on
their summer school break were trying to keep cool. Amongst
those was a young girl named Hattie who went to
play at Rock Creek Park with some friends and her

(00:32):
older brother. But the water at Rock Creek Park wasn't
safe to swim in, and a series of events surrounding
this would provide opportunity for Hattie to be placed in danger.
At first, there were leads, tips and attention, but over
time those leads dried up, and now, nearly sixty four
years later, the questions remain with no answers in sight,

(00:57):
something we hope renewed attention to the case can share.
I'm your host, Megan, and each week on a Simpler
Time True Crime, I cover older unsolved cases and challenge
the idea that a simpler time means a safer time.
This week, I'm bringing to you the unsolved abduction of
Hattie Jackson. Today's case was a listener request from several

(01:41):
months ago. Interestingly enough, the case had already been on
my list and this listener not only requested it, but
shared with me was she had already found about the case.
I knew I wanted to cover it, but I was
hoping to find buried information. And the truth is, even
after all of these years, in all of these months,

(02:02):
this is a challenging case to get original documents on
because of how old it is. But I was met
with some success, and so I want to share the
connections I found and where the case stands today. Just
as a content warning, A potential connecting case is discussed
later in this episode, and it has some graphic details

(02:24):
related to the murder of a child. In this case,
I do share some more details that I typically don't
share or would avoid because they're a little bit graphic,
but they are significant to the case. As always, I
never share more graphic details than are necessary.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
So let's get into it.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Hattie y Von Jackson was born on September twenty second,
nineteen fifty four. She also had a brother, Herbert Junior,
who was three years older than her. Her father, Herbert Senior,
was a photostat operator for the Weather Bureau. The photostat
machine took pictures of documents before xerox and the photocopier
made them obsolete. Not a lot is out there about

(03:06):
Hattie other than the fact that she was a sweet
girl who attended school at Trusdale Elementary School in Northwest Washington,
d C. Her and her family resided in a row
house on the fifty six hundred block of eighth Street
Northwest in d C, about six blocks from.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Rock Creek Park.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Rock Creek Park encompasses over seventeen hundred acres, and when
you combine it with its affiliated sites, say Meridian Hill Park,
Dumbarton Oaks, and several traffic circles, it manages nearly three
thousand acres. It is therefore the largest park in green
space within the city limits. If you consume a lot

(03:49):
of true crime content, and we're alive in the early
two thousands, you also might recognize it as the location
of the high profile murder case of DC intern Schondra Levy.
As I mentioned at the top of the episode, July
twenty first was a sweltering hot day and many neighborhood
kids were looking for a way to cool off, and

(04:09):
the Jackson kids were no different. Late that morning, Missus
Jackson packed lunches for her kids who are going to
be getting together with some friends to play at the park. Now,
before I go into the details of what happened next,
I want to just say that a lot of the
news articles discuss Hattie's brother, Herbert Junior's story changing a

(04:30):
few times, and I spent a lot of time pouring
over these details. I personally don't believe that the facts
of the story really change all that much at all.
It's my opinion that the quote unquote variances have to
do with how officers were interpreting the ten year old
boys play by play of events. As a mom myself,

(04:52):
I know sometimes when my kids have shared stories with me,
they're so fixated on certain details.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
The chronological order.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
May not be that important to them, or details that I,
as an adult may find particularly important may not hold
significance to them, and vice versa. And that's what you'll
sort of see play out here. Because I think all details.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Can be important.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
I'm going to give a more high level overview of
the events, and then as I go through the chronological investigation,
I'll share more specific details as they come out. So
the high level overview goes like this, The children that
day go swimming in the water of rock Creek Park.
A police officer then approaches them and says you can't

(05:36):
swim here the water is polluted and ask the children
to get out. Mind you, there were many kids swimming
there on this day, not just the Jackson children and
their companions. Sometime around this time, a man nearby who
has been sitting on a rock, approached the children and
said he knew of a swimming spot that wasn't polluted

(05:56):
about two miles up the road, and that he'd be
happy to drive them there by his car. The children,
with one of the boys acting as their spokesperson for
the group, declined the invitation and they headed up towards
the nearby playground area. Hattie seems to have some interaction
with this man, though, and somewhere along the way the
boys decide to ditch the playground and go back and

(06:19):
jump on the rocks, and they lose track of Hattie. Now,
Herbert Junior was the big brother, and he has a
real panicked moment and spends a significant amount of time
with his companions trying to locate his little sister himself
on his own without any professional help. We're talking hours.
When he can't find her, he realizes something must have happened,

(06:41):
and he knows he must alert the adults, So he
goes back home and the police are called. And to
their credit, this isn't one of those scenarios of complete
nonsense where they say maybe she ran away.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Police think one of two things.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
She is either lost in Rock Creek Park or she's
been abducted, and they quickly initiate a large scale search. Soon,
witnesses would come forward saying they saw someone matching Hattie's
description getting into a vehicle with someone who matched the
description of the guy, saying he could take them somewhere
else to swim.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
And so, with this high.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Level overview being established, let's dig into the details. Starting
with the initial search for Hattie. We know first that
the boys, which includes Hattie's ten year old brother, Herbert

(07:38):
Junior and his friends, conducted a search of their own.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
First.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Now, as adults with our fully developed prefrontal cortex, we're
probably thinking, why wouldn't they immediately go say Hattie's missing.
First of all, remember we're in the nineteen sixties, when
there wasn't a twenty four hour news cycle immediately telling
us when something bad has happened in any part of
the world. And so a lot of this whole simpler,

(08:03):
safer time bubble of security developed because people didn't realize
it could happen, because they weren't aware of it happening
immediately within their neighborhood. So I highly doubt the boys
were thinking that Hattie had been taken. Rather, they were
likely concerned about how much trouble they were going to
be in for losing track of her, wondering if she
had wandered off, And I imagine even as they went

(08:26):
home to say, hey, we can't find Hattie, they very
well could have expected her to be waiting for them
back there, having left them at the park and walking
home herself. When they got home and she wasn't there,
police were then called, and they jumped into action. According
to reporting in the Washington Daily News, police from the

(08:46):
immediate jurisdiction, along with park police and citizens combed over
the park. When she wasn't immediately found, others were pulled
into an all night search with eighteen ca nine dogs.
By morning, the search party grew even larger. One hundred
and sixty officers, many of whom were off duty, were

(09:07):
searching alongside volunteers. Search dogs were given a pair of
Hattie's pajamas that she had worn on Thursday, the night
before she disappeared, and they followed her scent for a
short trail. The scent led away from the playground and
was traced along a small footpath adjacent to Beach Drive
and then to a little parking area off of Beach Drive.

(09:31):
It then abruptly stopped. The search continued on, with officers
from the third, sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth, and thirteenth precincts
searching from Blagden Avenue all the way over to the
Zoo and back to the Maryland state line. The area
has changed over the years, but all have a lot
of corresponding photos on my Instagram page at Simpler Time

(09:55):
Crime Pod. On Saturday, the twenty second police also released
information they had received from a witness statement.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
The witness was.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
The park police officer Private od Signore. He said he
observed a white man sitting on a rock watching children
swim in Rock Creek. This included one little girl who
matched Hattie's description. Officer Sidnoor stated that he approached the
kids and told them they needed to leave because the

(10:27):
creek was too polluted to swim in safely. He recalled
that he saw the children starting to get out, but
he didn't stick around to see what happened. After Sunday,
July twenty third, police released the first full story they
had pulled together from the boys and other witnesses. Herbert,
Junior and Hattie had arrived at the park that day

(10:48):
and met up with three of Herbert's friends, eleven year
old Marvin Jones, nine year old Louis Beaman, and.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Eight year old Desi Curtau.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
According to reporting in the Evening s Star, the boys
reported they had all gone on to the water and
were splashing around in some shallow water, playing on the rocks.
At some point, they noticed a man sitting on the
rocks watching them. He began engaging with them, telling them
that he knew of a place with nice blue water,
a great spot, as he described it, about two miles

(11:20):
up the road, and that he would happily take them
in his vehicle. The kids declined his offer and continued
playing until park police Officer Signore drove up in his vehicle,
told them to get out of the water, and drove off,
with Officer Signor recalling that he still saw the man
watching them. At this time, I know hindsight is twenty twenty,

(11:43):
but it physically pains me to know that law enforcement
didn't just stop and keep an eye on these kids
until the man went away, or question him further, like
what are you doing here? But I know it's not
illegal to sit on a rock. And again, I know
it's hindsight. It's just sad that this could have end
so differently. According to the same reporting, after Officer Signor left,

(12:06):
they went back towards the playground with the man ahead
of them, and eventually they doubled down and went back
towards the creek, and they said at that time Hattie
stayed with this man. There was also two other teen
witnesses that came forward, Emmanuel Carr, who was fourteen years
old and Nicholson Brown, who was fourteen and about to

(12:28):
turn fifteen. They told investigators that they were on the
footpath that day and witnessed a white man walking with
a young black girl on the footpath and that at
one point he even squatted down to her level and
pointed out his vehicle to her. They then saw this
gentleman guide the young girl into the vehicle, a bluish

(12:49):
gray Chrysler, possibly a Plymouth and all have a picture
of what they think the vehicle looked like on the Instagram.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Another witness came.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Forward to say their car was parked nearby in the
same parking lot and that they witnessed the same exact
thing as those two boys. By Monday, July twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty one, police expanded their search to look at
sites bodies had been found in the months leading up
to Hattie's disappearance.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Their belief was.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
That perhaps the killer would have repeated a ritual and
dumped a body again in the same location.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
One such location was the.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Place the body of a seven year old boy named
Michael Condetti had been found in November of nineteen sixty
Michael had returned home from school on an early November day,
telling his mom he really wanted this book bag that
had a boy Scout logo on it. After much discussion,
his mother told him that he could walk two blocks

(13:48):
to the local variety store and look for this backpack.
He could price them out, bring the information home, and
that when his father got home from work that night
they would discuss it. A clerk at the stor verified
that Michael came in. She said he was looking for
this specific backpack, and she told him that this particular
one he was looking for wasn't in stock, and that

(14:10):
she could happily call to the other locations and see
if they had it in stock.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
She recalled how he.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Excitedly told her that he had joined boy Scouts and
he wanted to be like his big brother, who was
a boy Scout, and that his big brother had earned
all these badges and that's why he was so intent
on getting this particular backpack. He left the store, but
she remembers that he curiously, just a little while later
returned with money in his hand, and there was a

(14:37):
man walking behind him. She again let him know that
they didn't have this one he was looking for in store,
and she watched him walk out with the man. He
was never seen alive again after that day, and days
later his body was found in a nearby secluded area,
nude and he had.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Been sexually assaulted.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Knowing his killer was out there, police looked in the
area his body was found, but they found no sign
of Hattie there or any other location. On Tuesday, July
twenty fifth, police released a composite sketch of the suspect.
They had used what was called an identic kit, which
was growing in popularity at the time. I know I've

(15:20):
talked about this vintage identicit on some other episodes I've done,
but this was advanced beyond just basic artist renderings, which
is what they had to rely on beforehand, and artists
renderings left a lot up to interpretation. Instead, they use
this identicit, which is a kit that contains a more
than forty thousand photographs made all over the world.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
There's fifty two.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Chins from week to strong, one hundred and two different
types of eyes anywhere from squinty to popped, thirty three
types of lips from thin to full, thirty two noses,
eighty eyebrows, one hundred and twenty six hairlines, and as
sordid group of wrinkle scars, beards, mustaches, hats, you name it.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
So this is what they were using.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
In fact, new law enforcement officers were trained on it,
and that's how they came up with this particular composite sketch.
The man was described as in his thirties, deeply tanned,
with brown, bushy hair combed back in oval face, a
smallish mouth with thin lips, and they said he was
around five foot eight and around one hundred and seventy

(16:26):
to one hundred and eighty pounds. They said he was
wearing a white T shirt or sports shirt, light brown
or gray trousers, in highly polished black shoes with a
round toe. He was also wearing sunglasses.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
By July twenty.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Sixth, police released to the media that they had received
a phone tip that the composite sketch looked a lot
like a sexual predator that had been released on bond.
While they didn't mention who this person was at the time,
they said that they were taking this tip seriously and
looking into it, and I'll share who I think this
was a little while later. More than a week into

(17:03):
the investigation, police and Hattie's family.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Were growing more and more concerned.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
About Hattie's safety and the outcome of the investigation. Hattie's
father said that Hattie was not the type to wander off.
Her mother shared that she had recently come home from
school and told her how they had learned not to
talk to strangers and not to go with strangers, and
that her daughter would not be one to do so,
and that the only way her daughter would have gone

(17:27):
with someone was if he had tricked her and I think.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's probably true.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
I don't know if any of you as listeners recall this,
but Dateline did a series years ago called My Kid
Would Never, and they put kids on camera in situations that,
unbeknownst to them were simulated, and there were cameras filming nearby.
Will parents watched and they were scenarios like a stranger
knocking at the door or luring you into an ice

(17:55):
cream truck, or asking for help. And parents went in
the experiment saying, absolutely, knowing, my kid would We talked
about this, they know better, We've trained for this, and
time after time you'd see the horrified look on their
faces as their kids would fall into a trap. And
what is interesting is that sometimes you could even see

(18:16):
on the kids' faces that they were a little bit
weirded out or second guessing themselves, but the actor playing
the quote unquote bad guy insisted or doubled down, and they.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Gave in to be polite.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
So I believe missus Jackson was correct that he probably
did trek Hattie with some sort of story. And I
also believe that sometimes our kids will not always be
able to apply what they learn, because they're little people
and they're learning and they're up against a calculated adult predator,
so they don't even have a fair shot. One other

(18:49):
lead came up in this first week to ten days.
A woman said she had seen a vehicle driving into
the park with a young African American girl in it,
pounding on the window saying let me out. Police took
down information about this, but they struggled with the legitimacy
of it, because why would the car be driving into
the park. So they told the press about it, but

(19:10):
nothing more really came of it. With police running into
dead ends, they decided to go back to the drawing
board and to do something a little unconventional to sharpen
their focus. In early August of nineteen sixty one, police

(19:33):
took Herbert Junior and had him walk through his day
in real time. They left the house at the same
time and followed all the same steps and movements he
would have taken with him. To some degree, this could
have been seen as a little controversial because as a
ten year old boy with his sister missing, it's probably
a little traumatic. But it did provide critical clues and

(19:55):
it helped patch together some of what I was talking
about earlier, that with the little kid emphasis on chronological order,
not always being there, and not only their perception, but
their articulation of events. So, for example, they realized they
needed to bump up their timeline an hour. That's because
in their heads they had thought Hattie may have been
abducted around three pm on the day she went missing,

(20:18):
and that's because of earlier statements from her brother. But
they realized that what he was saying was that he
started circling back to look for her at three and
based on the other witness statements, she was actually likely
abducted about an hour before that. It's just that because
he's ten, he was preoccupied, so they had their timeline wrong.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
And why the hour is so.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Significant is that it helped police to eliminate certain vehicles
that were spotted in the park later and it narrowed
down the alibi window for anybody who was investigated.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
For the crime.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
So here's what they found. And this next part is
going to be a direct passage from an article I
linked in the show notes from The Evening Star. It
read A contingent of Metropolitan and Park Police, led by
Inspector Sullivan and Lieutenant Thomas I. Harrie, followed Herbert as
he walked one point two miles from the playground at

(21:13):
sixteenth and Kennedy Streets, northwest down Morrow Drive along Beach
Drive to the spot.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Where the youngsters went swimming.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Herbert told police that shortly before he and his sister
ate lunch at the playground, he heard a man tell
a friend that it was four minutes of twelve. He
and Hattie ate lunch at a stand there, he said,
and went for a ride on the playground swings and seesaw.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Herbert said.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
He then suggested they go swimming. After police were led
by Herbert to the swimming site, a group of three
boys who had been there when Herbert and Hattie arrived,
showed police how they had jumped on rocks in the creek.
They had put their clothes on a rock and started
to swim, they said.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
The boys pointed to.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
A boulder, where they said a white man had been
sitting watching them swim.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Let me see you swim, they quoted him as saying.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
They told police that after a park policeman had warned
them not to swim in the polluted water, the stranger
explained the meaning of pollution and offered to take them
to a clear water.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
About two miles away, but they refused.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Herbert and the boys led Lieutenant Harriy and Sergeant Gertrude
Gottel up a steep path directly across the road from
the swimming site. This was the shortcut they had taken
to go back to the playground area after the policemen
had stopped them from swimming. The boys told police that
Hattie and the man walked ahead of them as they

(22:42):
climbed the hill. When they reached a clearing at the top,
the boys said that they stopped and they could see
Hattie on the swing with the man beside her. They
then decided that they turned back to go back down
the hill and jump on the rocks again. Two of
the boys quoted Herbert as saying, oh, Hattie will be
all right. I want to thank you for listening to

(23:13):
this week's episode. If you haven't already, please take a
moment to leave a five star review and share the
podcast with your friends. I'm on a mission to connect
with more families to do collaborative episodes, so if that's
you or someone you know, please have them reach out
to me. I appreciate all your support as always, and
now back to the show. My Heart breaks for Herbert Junior,

(23:44):
as I cannot imagine the burden he carried as a
young boy feeling responsibility towards his younger sister. And while
we can point to missteps from Herbert Junior and his friends,
he was a child, a small child, and the only
person responsible here is the man who abducted Hattie. At
this point, the FBI was heavily involved, and they did

(24:05):
their own composite sketch. I'll have a copy of this
on the Instagram page. It's fairly similar to the other one,
but it is a little more pronounced in detail and
a little more human looking. By late August of nineteen
sixty one, a five hundred dollars reward was put out
for information, which is a little over five thousand dollars
here in twenty twenty five, that still felt low to me,

(24:27):
and it turns out others thoughts so too, And so
a local person wrote to the paper petitioning for more
of the community to come together to raise funds. But
I can't tell if that actually ever happened. Herbert Junior
was perpetually shown photos of criminals or suspects that police
were bringing in for various crimes to see if he
recognized them. By August, he had his eleventh birthday, and

(24:50):
he continued to view colored pictures of men picked up
by police there in DC and surrounding jurisdictions. By August
thirty four, about six weeks after Hetty's abduction, police got
another bizarre lead. A man was trying to lure children
and one was possibly abducted. According to an article in

(25:13):
The Evening Star, a forty one year old woman named
Martha Baker called police Before going any further, I'll say
this is the toughest part of doing old old cases,
because Martha is no longer alive. She'd be over one hundred.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Years old today.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
And if she's the Martha Baker I found, she did
live a very long life, and I'm just a handful
of years shy of connecting with her. But she called
police on this day because she said her grandson, who
is Bobby Shelton, and his friend Priscilla Moore were approached
by a suspicious man. She said that her grandson ran
up to her and said that the man had tried

(25:48):
to coax him and Priscilla into his car around First
Street Northwest. He had apparently said he wanted to show
them something. According to missus Baker, she immediately thought of
Hattie and so she started running towards that intersection, and
she saw a small black boy in the front seat
of the vehicle that her grandson had described and that

(26:10):
it was being driven by a white man, and when
she hollered something, they drove away. But there was a problem.
There were no kids matching that description that were listed
as missing. Captain James Stargle of the Second Precinct directed
a search of the four Black area and said, quote,
we have no report of missing children, but there are

(26:32):
so many children in the neighborhood with a babies that
are taking care of them that it would take at
least a day to account for all of them.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
So the media buzzed about this for a couple of days,
but nothing came of it, so it seemed to be
a false alarm. The next thing I'm going to tell
you about could be a red herring, but I want
to mention it. On September second, nineteen sixty one, a
young girl named Ramona Price went missing. She was the
same age as Hattie Jackson, but Ramona was white and

(27:04):
in California, So why am I telling you this, well,
Ramona lived with her parents and they were getting ready
to move on the day she went missing, she told
her father she was going to walk from their old home,
and as they were packing up, she said, I'm going
to just take a walk to our new home. Her
dad kind of thought she was joking because the new
home was like six or seven miles away, so he

(27:26):
just said, okay, go to it then, and she went outside.
There's mixed reports. Some say she came back and said
that she was lost, and another said she went back
outside afterwards, but either way, she went missing during this
time and she is still missing as of today. A
few witnesses came forward to say they saw her getting
into a faded gray or blue plymouth just like Caddie. Now,

(27:51):
I'll be the first one to admit that this is
a bit of a stretch, but the vehicle similarity made
it worth mentioning. We know there are certain serial killers
whose occupations or lack thereof, give them a window to
prowl across the United States, and prior to modern day advancements,
it helped keep them undetected.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
So it wasn't that.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Rare of a strategy. Killers and serial predators banked on
the idea that there was no way to trace them
and no communication between jurisdictions or across state lines. Police
believed that Ramona Price was the victim of a prolific
California serial killer named mac Ray Edwards. He drove a

(28:30):
similar vehicle, and his photo isn't super far off from
the composite sketch in Hattie's case, though he'd.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Be older than the perpetrator was suspected to be.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Is it likely that it was him who was in
Rock Creek Park that day?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
No? Is it a possibility?

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yes, Honestly, we don't know. One of the things that's
the most tricky is that this occurred in the nation's capital.
People visit DC from all over, so I'm including it
because of that overlap, and make of it what you will.
One of the things that came out of the eyewitness
descriptions of the vehicle that picked up Hatty was that

(29:08):
had a dark yellow license plate in the back, and
police identified about five or six states where that could
have come from. And you know, in certain states seeing
a bunch of out of state license plates would have
been a red flag.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
But not in DC.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
DC has out of state plates all the time. There's
constantly visitors there with different license plates. In mid September
nineteen sixty one, police reported that they had a confession
in Hattie's case. The suspect was a thirty three year
old Washington d c.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Musician.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
According to reporting in The Evening Star, the man told
police that he had killed the Jackson girl and left
her body in a suitcase in a room in the
twenty three hundred block of Porters Street Northwest. After a
search of that address didn't produce anything, the man then
told police that he had stuffed her into it an
incinerator at fourteenth in Fairmont Streets Northwest. That too led nowhere,

(30:07):
So the police brought the man to these locations as
well as all the way through Rock Creek Park where
he sort of wandered around and said where he had
taken Hattie. And none of it really matched with the evidence,
and there was no sign of Hattie Jackson, so they
viewed this all as a false confession. On October thirty first,

(30:34):
nineteen sixty one, police received a break, but not in
Hattie's case. Remember little Michael I was telling you about earlier.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Well, they arrested a.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Suspect in his case, I'm not honestly even going to
say his name, because I don't like highlighting people who
don't deserve it, if possible, But this man admitted that
he saw Michael Let a bus stop. He struck up
conversation with him, and he told him that he'd be
able to help buy him that backpack. When Michael had
come out of the variety store and told him I

(31:04):
don't have enough money for what I'm looking for, he
gave him some additional dollar bills and he went back
into the store with him. Afterwards, he lured the boy
away into the woods, where he assaulted and murdered him.
This was, of course devastating, and as a mom myself,
I have a hard time reading the details, which I'll
spare you. But this man couldn't have been responsible for

(31:28):
Hattie's murder because not only did he not own a vehicle,
he did not know how to drive one. He strictly
used public transportation. The next lead would come in May
of nineteen sixty two, a lead that many people view
to be the answer to Hattie Jackson to this day.

(31:56):
In May of nineteen sixty two, a local worker N.
Jesse Davis spotted a clothesline floating in the Scucol River.
Native Philadelphians, please forgive me if I butchered that. I
really tried to research the pronunciation. So this area is
a two and a half hour drive north of Hattie's
last known whereabouts.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
This worker reeled.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
In the clothesline and he found the clothesline to be
attached to a milk box. Within the milk box with
something horrifying, a dead little girl who would be dubbed
the Girl in the Box, named similarly to a nineteen
fifties crime of the Boy in the Box Philadelphia. And
this crime was horrific and the content warning is here

(32:43):
for this part. The corpse was a decapitated little girl.
Her body had various injuries to it, including a partially
severed finger with a bandage on it, which implied that
whoever did it had at least some sort of temporary
remorse for that injury. This was a little black girl,
estimated to be between four to six years old, but

(33:06):
they admitted, because of the time and what they had
to work with, they couldn't say for sure that that
was even her age. Her hands, feet, and back were
burnt in what was determined to be the killer trying
to set her on fire after she was murdered, and
it was unsuccessful. Another noteworthy clue was the white work
apron that covered her with her body was a March eleventh,

(33:31):
nineteen sixty two issue over the Philadelphia Daily Bulletin which
told police that whoever did this was at least in
the Philadelphia area in March of sixty two. There were
no other girls that went missing during this time that
matched the description besides Hattie Jackson, and investigators were quick
to make the connection. Unfortunately, back in nineteen sixty two,

(33:54):
there was no way to compare DNA. It just wasn't
a thing. The medical examiner stated that he did not
believe it was Hetty Jackson and effectively ruled her out,
but there was no way of knowing for sure. It
is worth noting that if it was Hattie, she would
have had to have been kept alive for several months
prior to this occurring, and if you wanted to be

(34:17):
filled with rage, the body of the Philadelphia doe DUBBEDESK
Girl in the Box has been lost. She's not in
the plot that she was supposedly buried in. So now,
even though we have the technology there is no way
of comparing her and knowing. I had also heard that
there was no DNA for Hetty Jackson, but in a

(34:37):
common section of an article about her from twenty eighteen,
I saw one of her surviving nieces come forward and
identify herself, and she offered up DNA if it was
still needed. I don't know if authorities collected it, but
it seems like Hattie does have a lot of living relatives.
If you're one of them and you're listening.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Please reach out. I'd love to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
At this time of the Girl in the Box discovery
authorities also released another person of interest, who I think
is the person referred to from several months ago as
the man who was out on bond but had that
violent sexual history. His name was Thomas Welton Holland, not
to be confused with the wonderful Tom Holland, actor of

(35:20):
our current day, and he looked a lot like the
composite sketch, and he was free during the time of
Hattie's abduction. According to the New Pittsburgh Courier, Holland had
a history of vicious sexual attacks on children, and he
had been in jail but was released on parole from
the Maryland State Penitentiary on March twenty eighth of nineteen

(35:44):
sixty one. Condition of that parole was that he secured
psychiatric help, but he never did seek out that psychiatric help,
and he skipped town when it became a parent that
he had done so, and left the state of Maryland.
A federal warrant with the FBI was issued on August
twenty ninth, nineteen sixty one, charging him with unlawful interstate

(36:05):
flight to avoid confinement after conviction of robbery. The FBI
actually placed them on their top ten most wanted list,
and I have to believe that's because they genuinely believed
he was a significant suspect in this Hattie Jackson case.
I think if he had just skipped state lines on
his parole and they didn't think he had committed something
like this, it wouldn't have been a big deal, and

(36:26):
they didn't come out and say that. That's my speculation,
but I'm just piecing together the information. The FBI said
that he has been armed with a gun and knife
in the past, and you should consider him extremely dangerous now.
He did get captured in June of nineteen sixty two
in Kansas, and he was never connected to Hattie's disappearance conclusively.

(36:49):
He has since passed away, and if he's connected, we
won't know. Almost all of Hattie's reporting came within the
first year of her disappearance. I had one interesting observation
in this case. As I was compiling information, I couldn't
help but notice how much the composite sketch of her
alleged ab doctor looked like a man I mentioned in
last week's episode, James Mike de Bartolabin. He has never

(37:14):
been on police's radar for this crime, but he was
free and allegedly committed dozens of crimes all over the
country that are unaccounted for. He typically attacked adult women,
but he also would pick women that were in different themes,
such as real litters or women walking home, and they
were all different ages, so I don't totally rule out
the idea that he would abduct a child. For the

(37:37):
one year anniversary, Hattie's mother was interviewed and she shared
one tip that hadn't previously been shared with the public.
On the very night Hattie went missing, a man called
her house, identifying himself as a police officer and saying
Hattie had been found and was on her way home.
It honestly choked me up to read about this because

(37:59):
I imagine there hope and at this time police had
not put all this out to the news yet she
had in fact not come home, she had not been found,
and police verified that nobody had found her or made
that call that worked for them. The phone number of
the Jacksons was unlisted and only friends and family had

(38:20):
that number. The only other person who had given it
to the caller was Hattie. Since then, there have been
no new leads in the disappearance of Hattie Jackson. While

(38:42):
it's no longer being actively investigated due to the time
that has passed, anybody with the information is encouraged to
contact the DC Metro Police Department agency phone number had
two zero two five seven six six seven six'. Eight
so much time as past and if you've been carrying
information at a secret it's time to come forward and

(39:05):
clear your.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Conscience this has.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Been another episode of A Simpler time true. Crime if
you appreciate the Work i'm, doing please leave a five
star review and case suggestions can be made To simpler
timecrimepod at gmail dot. Com as, always thank you so
much for listening and join.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Me again Next.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Monday

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