February 4, 2025 • 43 mins
Dorothy Arnold was a young heiress with everything to live for, but one December day in 1910, she disappeared in broad daylight from the center of New York. Over a century later, her case still haunts the city. Listener discretion is advised.
With special guest Sean Anthony Davis.
Theme Music by Matt Glass https://www.glassbrain.com/ Instagram: @astudyofstrange Website: www.astudyofstrange.com Hosted by Michael May Email stories, comments, or ideas to astudyofstrange@gmail.com!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
December 12th, 1910.
The date of one of the most mysterious
missing personcases of the early 20th century.
The disappearance of Dorothy Arnold,A young woman seemingly
living the perfect life, a life of luxuryand privilege vanished without a trace.
The 25 yearold heiress bumped into a friend
(00:23):
at fifth Avenueand 27th Street in New York City.
She was in a great moodand excited about the day ahead.
Shopping.
Dorothy bid farewell to her friend
and no one ever saw her again.
This is a study of strange.
(00:57):
Terrible thingshappen to innocent people all the time.
So why did a community take particularinterest in the story of Dorothy Arnold,
a privileged heiress over any other murderor missing persons story at the time?
Could it be our fascination with the rich,the powerful and celebrity culture?
Or does it also stemfrom a subconscious realization
that a tragedy can befallthe rich and powerful?
(01:19):
It can happen to anyone.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Michael May and with me for what?
The third timenow I think, is Sean Anthony Davis.
Yeah. Number three. I'm
Good.
Very good.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, God.
Now, I actually think I should do that.
I should absolutely do that.
(01:41):
I'm going to wait till five.
It's probably going to be yourself.Maybe.
Matt, there's a couple other peoplethat I love to have on.
It is, it is.
Yeah.
No, I appreciate it.
And for those interested, if you're new tothe show, Sean was on an episode
(02:02):
about internet mysteries,which is really fun.
We cover a lot of those and then also, wasit the Superman, The Death of Superman?
So have you ever heard of DorothyArnold before?
Have you heard of this case?
(02:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's a pretty bizarre one for somevery simple kind of reasons, but it did.
I I've I've been attracted to this storyand sort of that true crime
way that people that like thiskind of content, it comes to it.
And that's because there are some strangeaspects, strange aspects to it.
(02:44):
There are mysteriesto this story, but it also
and I do study the strange,
but it also makes methink I haven't really covered
a, I don't think I've covereda missing person before on the show.
I've definitely worked on other projectsthat cover missing people,
but it really, I think, gets into this
very relatable fearthat I think anybody has,
(03:05):
which is a fear of kidnaping,getting lost, Yeah.
No I mean
(03:42):
Yeah.
And something to think about.
Maybe we'll come to this at the end,but it's.
This is a very wealthy person.
This is a socialite.
This is not really akinto, like, Paris Hilton,
but that's just like the first namethat came to my mind in the modern age.
And, you know,we take as a culture, as a society,
we take a lot of attentionwith when someone like that disappears
(04:04):
like I just said before, like thereis this thing about like, wait, wait,
if it can happen to someone like that,then it can happen to any of us.
And so one of my my sort of
questions to posit and think about is,why do we pay
more attention to wealthy peoplewhen something like this happens?
So are you ready for it?
(04:24):
Can we get in? Yeah.
Here's we'll figure it out.
Of course we will. Of course we will.
Dorothy Harriot Camille
Arnold was born on July 1st, 1885.
Arnold was a woman of wealth, privilegeand and ambition.
By all accounts, Dorothywas living a charmed and comfortable life.
She came from a prominent family.
(04:45):
Her father, FrancesArnold, was a wealthy fine goods importer.
Things like, perfume, things like that.
And his family can be tracedback to the Mayflower.
Her uncle was a Supreme Courtjustice, Justice Rufus Peckham,
which is just a great sort of 19thcentury name.
And her mother,Mary Arnold, was a high society member.
(05:07):
And my meaning is,even though this is after the,
quote unquote, Gilded Age,
and if you watched the HBO show,you kind of know about that.
The customs andand society doesn't change overnight.
So even though the Gilded Age
is technically over in 1910,it is still part of New York society
that is still very muchwhat they're living in.
And where I think the your family's
(05:29):
public persona is almost moreimportant than anything else.
Yeah.
And that comes into this storyquite a bit.
And the relationships with other wealthyfamilies, assured, high paying
(05:54):
jobs and society investments, entranceto the best schools and so forth.
And on that note,Dorothy was well-educated.
She graduated from BrynMa College, a liberal liberal arts college
in Pennsylvania.
Afterwards,she returned to her family at home at 108
East 79th Street, and attemptedto begin a career as a writer.
(06:15):
She was not planning to sitand live off her
inheritance, which I thinkis a really cool thing about Dorothy.
She had this passion to pursue herdream career,
but her family was in her way.
So, here's just some brief detailsabout her family.
She had, a brother, Dan Hinckley Arnold.
She had a sister, Marjorie Brewster.
(06:38):
And like I said, her her one of her uncle
or one of her uncles was a Supreme Courtjustice.
Her grandfatherwas a very successful banker,
which is probably wheremost of the wealth was built up from.
Oh, theold East Coast kind of money there.
And then the home at 108 East 79th Street.
It's just off or sort of near Park Avenue,very fancy place, surrounded by other
(07:05):
very fancy people and in large,
wealthy mansions of New York City.
So a few months before she disappeared,Arnold asked her father
if she could have an apartmentin Greenwich Village
because she wantedto focus on her writing.
And we very quickly, Sean got toour recreation scene that we're married.
(07:25):
Yeah.
So this is a scene about,her asking her father
to to essentially move outand to start her career.
Or do you want to read Dorothy or Mr.
Arnold?
Do it, do it.
So I just watched,
(07:45):
Wizard of Oz with my son recentlybecause I was like, you got to see.
You have to see some of these movies.
And so we watched The Wizard of Oz,and I forgot, just because I say, Dorothy,
that's the way I say Dorothy is like,there's not a lot of syllables in there,
but when you watch the movie, I.
Yeah, Dorothy,Dorothy, don't go over that.
Dorothy.
(08:06):
Yeah, I just loved it.
Anyway, that has nothing to dowith Dorothy Arnold.
So here we go.
It's the evening cocktail hour.
Dorothy enters her family's drawing room.
Her father and mothersit silently on a nearby couch, listening
to Dorothy's sister gossip about a friendwho's marrying a simple lawyer
who doesn't come from money.It's terrible.
(08:26):
And she's muttering.
The whole family is dressed to the ninesas they await the dinner bell.
Just an averageevening for the Arnold family.
Dorothy attempts to interrupt.
What is it?
You can speak in front of your family.
(08:49):
Good heavens. Why?
Mr. Arnold laughs.
The sisterand mother begin to chuckle, to.
You don't need an apartmentto write your silly stories.
A good writer writes anywhere.
(09:11):
Professional.
Like a job. Like a poor person.
No child of mine will have a job.
It would embarrass the family name.
You've been reading too many progressivemagazines.
Besides, I don't think there's ever beena professional girl writer.
(09:32):
Sure, honey.
And one day we'll all have telephonesthat fit inside our pockets. No.
She Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, look, the transatlanticis very close to that general
British sound, so, Yeah, as much as it's a silly story,
(09:52):
this is a very serious caseand very real people.
So it is.
I always have this hesitation of like,oh, God, we just made fun of these people,
and they're about to go through somethingvery harrowing and terrible.
But I do like to kind of poke funat this high society
kind of thinking that she lived in.
And it very much may have had an effect onher and may be tied into a theory
(10:14):
that comes up about what may have happenedto her and her father did.
This is a, a quote from himis that you don't like a write.
A good writer can write anywhere.
You don't need an apartment.
And that is what he told her that day.
So instead of moving into an apartment,Dorothy stayed home.
However, it didn't stop her from writing.
She got to work,and she wrote a short story
called Poinsettia Flames, whichshe submitted to the magazine McClure's.
(10:37):
It was rejected,and her family reportedly began
teasing her about it in her attemptto, like, write a story and be a writer.
And that still didn't stop her.
She continued to write,
and we know that she wrote at leastone more story called Lotus Leaves.
I've heard a few different thingsabout this story when, during research,
some people say that it was submittedto McClure's and rejected again.
(10:59):
I've also heard that
it was submitted to other placesand they just never heard back.
So if listeners,if you know the story of Dorothy Arnold
and have some more specificsabout what happened
with more of her writing,email me a study of strange at gmail.com.
I would love to,get clarification on that.
So this leads us tothe day of the disappearance.
(11:20):
On December 12th, 1910.
Dorothy Arnold walked down stairswearing a long blue coat
with a large velvet hat,a muff, and a purse.
A I call this a tailored suit.
It was around 11 a.m.
her mother was not in the best of healthand barely left the house
at this time,and she asked Dorothy what she was doing.
(11:40):
Dorothy said that she was planning
to spend the day shopping, primarilyto buy an evening dress for her sister's
coming out party, or the debutante party,which was coming up,
and her mother actually did suggestthat she should come,
go with Dorothyto go shopping to escort her.
And Dorothy said, no, no, no, no, not now.
I want to go by myself.
And she left her mom at home.
(12:00):
And according to the Arnold family, later,Dorothy
had approximately 25to $30 of cash in her possession.
This is about $1,000 today,so she had a good deal of money on her.
Yeah.
And she we know that she visited the Park
and Tilford store at the corner of FifthAvenue and 59th Street.
She charged a half pound box of chocolatesto her families account.
(12:23):
Good for her left chocolate.
This is around noonand she placed it in her muff.
And then she walked 22 blocks,which is 1.4 miles
south to Brentano s bookstore on FifthAvenue near Rockefeller Center.
While at Brentano,Arnold purchased Engaged Girl
Sketches, a book of essaysby Emily Calvin Blake.
(12:43):
Witnesses, and I believe the witnesseswere all like employees of these shops,
said that Dorothy was niceand she didn't show any unusual behavior
outside of that bookstore.
Arnold ran into a female friend,Gladys King.
King recalled that the two spoke brieflyabout Marjorie's upcoming debutante party,
Marjorie's the sister, and that Arnoldseemed to be in good spirits.
(13:06):
Gladys had her acceptanceletter to the party, her RSVP on her,
so she actually handed it to Dorothyand made a joke about saving postage.
Like, oh, I don't have to pay for a stampif I give this to you now and then.
King said that that, she had to meet hermother for lunch at the Waldorf Astoria.
So she left some accounts.
Get this mixed upand say that Dorothy was like,
(13:28):
oh, I have to meet my mom at the WaldorfAstoria for brunch and left.
But it's actually Gladys that was like,I have to meet my mom.
I'll talk to you later.
Gladys said that Arnold mentionedthat she was going to walk home
through Central Park.
They waved goodbyeand there are no published reports
or witness accountsor sightings of Dorothy Arnold officially
(13:50):
after this, no one ever saw Dorothy again
as she walked away from her friend.
Any initial questions or comments?
Very, very astute question.
(14:13):
She did, and we're going to,if you don't mind, I'm
going to come to thatin a little bit later.
That is a great question.
And something that I thinkthe family immediately
sort of and work towards publicly.
A lot of people don't think that peoplethat the family was aware,
but they very muchwere aware of a gentleman suitor.
I'll mention this as well,even though it's 1910.
(14:34):
Just to give some perspectivehere, it's still a huge city.
There's a lot of people in New Yorkand she is in a central area
that is bustling there.
It's daytime, it's noon, it's lunchtime,there's people everywhere.
And that's one of the set of circumstancesthat makes this a very strange
story, because there's literallyno more witnesses that you can trust
(14:54):
after this. And.
Correct.
None of that is ever found.
And that's, a peculiar thing.
And there's more peculiar,strange things that come up in this story.
(15:14):
So by early evening, Arthur failed to.
Arnold. Excuse me.
Arnold, not Arthur.
Arnold failed to return home for dinner.
She rarely missed dinnerwithout informing her family.
And the family.
They they got worried, and they startedcalling Dorothy's friends and asking
if anybody had seen her or was with herand they couldn't figure out anything.
Shortly after midnight on December 13th,
(15:36):
Elsie Henry, one of Arnold's friends,phoned the family to check in and be like,
hey, did she ever come homethat you may find her?
And Henry saidthat later said that Arnold's mother
answered the telephoneand said that Dorothy had returned home.
She had a headache and she went to bed.
Dorothy was not home.
And this is an odd move, onethat I actually do
(15:57):
have some some thinkingthat that some motivation behind that.
But it definitely drawssuspicion to the family
and that something strange is going on.
The next morningthey made another odd choice.
They didn't call the police.
Dorothy is still not home.
They called insteadDorothy's brother's friend named John
(16:18):
S Keith, who was a lawyer.
Keith also was a friend of Dorothy's.
He had known her for some time,friend of the whole family's, really,
and they intended to ask Keith to,basically
become like a private investigatorfor Dorothy.
And that's essentially what he did.
And so these odd moves,
again,kind of create this, this feeling of,
(16:41):
I guess, just suspicion for the family.
Something is off and.
Yeah, yeah.
Why why call the lawyer frame to, to golook for Dorothy instead of the police?
And the truth here.
This is where I think there is.
It does explain it a little bit.
You can still have suspicion. That'sperfectly normal and fine.
(17:03):
And who knows, maybe they did havesomething to do with this.
But the truth is that in their societyclass, thinking of the time,
they didn't want media attentionand it could be socially embarrassing.
And it's speculatedthat the family was influenced by the 1909
disappearance of Adelle Bowes,who was a 13 year old girl
who was reportedmissing from Central Park,
(17:25):
and she was laterfound to have run away to Boston.
So she survived.
She was alive and she ran away,essentially to prove to her parents,
like, hey, I'm 13,I can do stuff on my own.
Let me go to the house.
And the Bose family were alsoa prominent Upper East Side family,
and they were scandalizedin the newspapers.
They were scandalizedin the inner circles of their friends,
(17:47):
and the Arnold familydidn't want any of that.
And also,if they're looking if they knew that story
and they were really influencedby it, like people suspect
this Adelle Bowes came home.
So part of them was like,well, she'll she'll come home.
So and we don't wantwe don't want to cause a fuss and get
scandalized by our friends and newspaperswhen she just comes
(18:07):
home.
(18:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially if you think.
Hey look, she's she's gone outand maybe this gentleman suitor
that you were going to find out about,maybe they're like oh God.
Did she like, you know, see this this guy.
So it makes sense to me.
It makes sense to me.
It's still very odd,but it makes sense to me now.
John Keith, the lawyer who becamelike an investigator, he honestly
(19:02):
did a pretty good job of it, even thoughhe's not really an investigator.
He went to hospitals,morgues, apartment buildings,
halfwayhouse is all over like the northeast.
He was like calling uponall these different places.
Could not find her.Oh, and let me back up to.
He first went into her roomand they found that all of her clothes,
all of her belongings, with the exceptionof what she had on her, were there.
(19:23):
So jewelry, clothing, shoes,all that kind of stuff.
There were personal letters on her desk.
Some of them had foreign postmarks.
That's important to think aboutbecause that could be a clue to something.
There's also information for transAtlantic Ocean liners,
and there were burnedpapers in the fireplace.
Now, a lot of people presume thatthe burned papers were like manuscripts.
(19:45):
Her short storythat may have been rejected.
So she was mad and burned it.
That is purely speculation.
Everybody just like,oh, it's a thing that she didn't.
It could have been a letterfrom a boyfriend.
It could have it literally could have justbeen like, oh, the fire's dying out.
I want to keep it going.
Let me put some of this paper in itso no one knows for sure.
But people do like to speculateon these things as they should,
(20:07):
because these could be clueslegitimately to what happened to her.
Keith also talked to the shopkeepers,
places that she went shopping,all that kind of stuff.
Really couldn't get anywhere becausehe couldn't find out anything about her.
So he, he convinced the familyto hire the Pinkertons,
the Pinkerton detective agency.
And I'm sure that name ringsa bell to people.
(20:27):
Especially if you watch old Westerns.
The Pinkertons are always showing up.
A lot of times they're bad guys
because they did have a lot of powerat this period of time.
And in the Old West time, but they're a legitimate private
detective agency,and they're still around.
That's the amazing.
Yeah, Pinkerton agency is still around.
Yeah.
And, as much as they sometimes could be,
(20:48):
sort of,have had way too much power back then.
They were investigators andthey kind of knew what they were doing.
So they also went to more morguesand hospitals and halfway houses,
sanatoriums and did their did their searchto see if she turned up
anywhere, couldn't find her.
And they finally convinced thefamily to call the police.
(21:12):
You know,no police had ever been notified.
And yeah, so so Frances Arnold'sDorothy's dad finally calls the police.
Now I did find some clarificationbecause I read a lot about this story
and everything
says they never called the policeuntil the Pinkertons convinced them.
The police departmentsdidn't know about Dorothy, and.
And it's a sort of a minor thing,but the Pinkerton Agency,
(21:34):
being actual investigators,notified a lot of police departments
on the East Coastin case she had turned up anywhere.
So they were aware, but they couldn'tformally start an investigation
until the family was,like, reported her missing officially.
So the police convinced the Arnolds to dosomething that they thought would help,
which is enlist the public's help,which they didn't want to do.
So this is a few weeks aftershe went missing and they held a press
(21:58):
conference on January 25th, 1911.
Reporters came and FrancesArnold told them all
about the disappearanceand offered a $1,000 reward.
He also made a cryptic,somewhat pessimistic comment
where he claimed thathe thought his daughter had been killed
like that was,and that was a little bit of him
just trying to tryingto figure out the facts.
(22:20):
And one answer is of like,she was walking home.
She may have been through Central Park.She was probably killed.
But obviously as a parent,you still want to know.
And you know.
Yeah.
And hereI actually have a quote that he said.
So this is a quote from, from Franceshere,
assuming that she walked up homethrough Central Park,
(22:42):
she could have taken the lonely walkalong the reservoir there
because of the laxityof police supervision over the park.
I believe it's quite possible thatshe might have been murdered by Garrett
and her body thrown into the lakeor the reservoir.
Atrocious things do happen there.
There seems to be no justificationfor them.
(23:05):
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes it does.
And there are parts of Central Parkeven today where you can find yourself
(23:25):
not surrounded by people.
And I was I was in Central Park,I don't know,
four months ago, five months ago,something like that.
And we definitely we ended upin some spots that we were like,
oh, it's secluded and it doesn't feel likeCentral Park here.
And it was probably moreso that back in 1910, over 100 years ago,
I will clarify something.
She mentioned the reservoir.
She could have been dumpedin the reservoir.
(23:46):
It was actually frozen over at the time
so she could not have been dumpedin the reservoir.
But that doesn't mean
she could not have been sort of attacked,robbed and killed in the park.
Now, this is when after the.
Yeah.
This announcement to the public,the newspapers
and it's stuff like thisthat they're investigating this.
It starts to get a lot of attention.
(24:06):
And it comes to lightthat Dorothy had a gentleman friend,
a George Griscom junior, who she had metwhile she was attending Bryn Mawr College.
He's a 42 year old engineerat the time from Pennsylvania.
Reporters also discoveredthat Arnold had lied to her parents,
like months prior to the disappearanceand that she, she had told her parents
(24:30):
she was going to go visit a friend,Theodora Bates, in Boston.
However, when she went to Boston,she ended up spending a week
with Griscom in a hotel, actually,two different hotels.
I don't know why theythey, like, moved to hotels in the middle.
Could have been for gossip reasonsor whatever, I don't know.
But they stayed in two different hotelsand spent a whole week together.
And during this trip, she also pawned$500 worth of jewelry for $60.
(24:54):
And I can imagine hernot being really worried
about the full value of the moneybecause she's wealthy.
It's more of she needs spending cash,
and she doesn't want to ask her parentsfor cash
and there's no credit cards back then,
and she's in a different city,so it's like, I need cash.
I don't want them to know what I'm doing,
so I'm just going to pawn off this jewelry
and have some money to spend whileI'm hanging out with my boyfriend.
(25:18):
And yeah, it looks it sounded likeyou were about to say something.
I paused.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(25:40):
Oh, yeah.
I would assume.
Yeah,
1000 $2,000.
I would totally eat some thousand dollarchocolates, but I'm not going to spend
the money. I.
(26:03):
Yes, yes.
So, Yeah, I'll, I'll jump aheada little bit.
Here,let me mention one other thing real quick.
So around Thanksgiving, Dorothy
went to visit her friend Theodora again,but this time for real.
And this ties into George Griscom,which is why
I wanted to share this real quick.
So while she was with her friend,she was supposed to stay throughout,
(26:26):
like the Thanksgiving weekend or whatever,but she ended up leaving early
like she left far earlier than her familythat she was going to leave.
And then Theodora thought she would leave
and it's because sheshe got a letter from someone overseas,
and she then sort of like,wasn't in the best of mood and left.
Now again, this is all speculation,but people assume it was correspondence
(26:47):
from Griscom because Griscom eventuallyleft the country.
He was actually out of the countrywhen she went missing.
He was, touring Europe with his family.
So a lot of people speculatethat this letter came from Griscom.
Maybe he was breaking up with her
or something like that,and she got upset and left.
Again. We don't know.We don't know what was in that letter.
We don't know whoit was from. And we asked.
(27:10):
Absolutely.
We also foundout that they had been writing letters
even after this to each other.
So if it was from him,I don't think they broke up.
Or if they did, it didn't end upcontinuing to be like this bad thing.
So this is to this is to go and say that,
yes, they investigated,the gentleman friend
and he was in Florence, Italy,at the time of the disappearance.
(27:32):
A fantastic alibi.
But it's true.
He was he was completely out of town,and the family actually reached out to him
by telegram almost immediatelyafter the disappearance to ask
if he had any information about her.
Did she disappear?Was she traveling to meet him?
He said he didn't know anything about it.
He didn't know about the disappearance.
She wasn't planning to come see him inJanuary.
(27:53):
In 1911, Dorothy's motherand her brother went to the source.
They went to Griscom in Italyto talk to him directly, probably
also thinking maybe Dorothy's thereand they're trying to keep it secret.
So they go to Italy.
He's like, look, I don't know anything.
I'll do what I can to help.
And that same month,the San Francisco Chronicle reported
(28:15):
that hotel clerks
at the hotel where Griscom was stayingsaid that a veiled woman and a young man
came to see Griscom, and rumors persistas a veiled woman was Dorothy.
However.
That's right.
At the same time the mom went to visit.
So I would, I would posit,and I think other people do as well,
that the veiled womanwas actually Dorothy's
mom and her brothercoming to ask about Dorothy.
(28:37):
But again, we don't know, like people
haven't tried that togetherspecifically to confirm at all yet.
At some point following the disappearance,the Arnold family received two ransom
notes from quote unquote Kidnapers,who demanded $5,000 for Arnold's return.
These proved to be hoaxes,and in fact, I'm a little surprised
that they only received two such notes,because normally
those kind of things happen a lot.
(28:57):
Sadly, when these kind of stories happen.
Also, someone wrote a postcard that's,
that was postmarked from New York, andit said it was from Dorothy to her family.
And it just said, I'm safe.
And it was written in quote unquotefemale handwriting.
But people also believed that this wassome sort of prank or hoax as well.
(29:18):
So in February,Griscom made it back stateside,
and he immediately started helpingto try to find her on the ground.
He traveled around.
He again, similar thingas, like the Private Eyes did,
where he went to morgues and hospitalsand sanatoriums, and he looked around.
He also started publishing personal ads
begging Dorothy to contact himif she was around.
(29:38):
But she was never found again. Sean.
Which I know I've said a lot,but it is worth hitting again
that no one still to this dayknows what happened to Dorothy Arnold.
And there's so much in this casethat leads to confusion.
The family not content, not contactingthe police to investigate it immediately.
Everybody knows the first 48 hoursare like the most crucial
(30:01):
and missing person cases.
The weirdness of, like,she went through Central Park,
which is in the center of New York City,surrounded by people,
but there's no witnessesto anything that happened to her.
And I think that's the big one to me,is that there's no witnesses.
There's no one that's like there.
No, I will say there are some witnessesthroughout history,
(30:21):
even years after this, that like,think they saw Dorothy.
But a lot of that is just like it'sone of those things of like,
I went into the movietheater and I saw that.
Where's the other old woman?
And it's like, wait, where? What?
But there's no real validityto any of those.
But on that day,there's definitely no witness sightings.
No ones.
Like, I think I saw
a woman dressed in fancy thingswhen I was walking my dog in the park,
(30:42):
and she was headed thatway. There's none of that.
Yeah.
(31:04):
Yeah.
It's.
And like you, you asked about earlierthan muff was never found.
The shoes, the coat, the chocolates that,like nothing was found.
And so let me dive into the theoriesfor you, Sean.
So these are the main theories.
There are more theories.
And if you listeners have any,let me know about it.
one of the main theories, suicide
(31:25):
driven by the rejection or rejectionsthat she had from attempting
to be a writer,followed by the bullying from her family.
A lot of people think that this may havehad a very I'm sure it did have some kind
of hugely emotionaland psychological reaction and maybe
she was not in the best headspacebecause of that and committed suicide.
(31:46):
And there's a little bit, of informationaround this that people
put as not necessarily evidence,but maybe like fuel to this,
which is that Griscom, her boyfriend'scousin, had committed suicide.
Dorothyprobably knew all the details of that,
and it could have had an impact on her.
Maybe that was in the back of her headand she's like,
okay, I'm never going to be ableto do what I want to do.
My family doesn't like my boyfriend.
(32:07):
I'm not becoming a writer.
I'm just going to end it all.
I will say there are a lot of thingsgoing against it.
She was very excited about the partycoming up.
She was excited to be shopping,buying the book, buying a dress.
She we don't knowif she ever bought the dress.
In fact, she probably didn'tbecause they went to all the stores, but
she was planning to buy a dress.
(32:27):
So yeah, there's there's a lot of thingsthat I don't think necessarily
point to suicide, butI can definitely believe it to a certain
extent.
Right, right.
(32:50):
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah.
She didn't jump off the Empire StateBuilding, as you would know about it.
She didn't. Yeah.
And and also I would imagine
like she had it she was an opinionated,sort of driven person.
I would imagine most suicide, I believemost suicides people leave a note
(33:11):
or something around to be like,this is why this happened.
And I could I could see somebody like her
writing some kind of spiteful messageto her family, you know, like,
I don't want to presume too much, but,
you know,it's like I could see a note of some kind
in that situation, which obviouslythey didn't they never found.
So another theory
(33:32):
that also has some plausibility toit is pregnancy.
So some have suggestedthat she may have been pregnant
and she either left over the shame of thisor she went to an illegal abortionist
and then may have diedduring the operation.
And that happened a lot back thenand when it typically happened,
because it's an illegal operation, peoplealso hide the body.
(33:53):
So that is one scenario.
The boyfriend didn't seem toto give some way, but also he may not
have known, much like if she was pregnant,she may have kept it a secret.
So it's all an assumption,but it is a plausible
assumption based on society,the world and and stuff like that.
At the time.
The other main
theory isthat she ran away for similar reasons too,
(34:16):
for like the suicide she's upset with,her family wants to make it on her own.
I don't like the runaway theory.
Because she had it.
We already know that
she pawned jewelry to, like, get cashwhen she was out of town.
She didn't want anythinglike stuff of hers was left at home.
If she was going to do that,I would have taken all the jewelry.
I would have taken my expensive pursesand handbags.
And yeah.
(34:41):
Yes, exactly, exactly.
So that's where I run into some issuesabout that.
There are there is some other evidenceout there that I just
it's, it's people that followthe case will know it.
It's I don't think it's necessarily worthgetting into today
where like
she had other things of value on herand she may have had some other cash
somewhere else.
And this kind of stuff, but still, I thinkshe would have taken more from home
(35:03):
if that was the case.
And what I think my my personal theory
is similar to her father'sthat she was either kidnaped or killed.
And look, everything that we'retalking about here is conjecture.
That's why this is so mysterious.
But one simple scenario
that I think is the most plausibleis the kidnaped or killed scenario.
(35:25):
And that's because she was walking homethrough Central Park.
Like I already mentioned,
there are secluded areaswhere a woman in fine attire alone
could have been attacked to maybe likelyjust to be robbed.
That could have been the motivation.
And but, you know, killed and robbedand then the body hidden.
There is a you know,there are other ways to hide bodies
(35:46):
or get bodies out of the park and stuff.
It's hard, but it was it still can happen.
And, yeah.
So at the end of the day,those are the main theories.
But, an innocent person went missing
and there's no evidence,no key witnesses or suspects.
And it's one that still hauntsNew York City to this day.
(36:09):
I'm going to addjust a little bit of specifics
to a couple of these theoriesbefore we we finish up.
John one one is that in 1916,there's a doctor
that was running an illegal abortionclinic named Doctor Archie Lutz,
and he testifiedto the New York County district attorney
that he thinks Arnoldlike he operated on Arnold.
(36:30):
And she died.
And there were some peoplein the district attorney's office
that I thinkalso believed that to be true.
However,
there's there's some there's
some detectives that have said like, no,no, no, no, it wasn't it wasn't Arnold.
We know that situation.
And it sort of sort of brush it off.
Also in 1916,a convicted felon named Edward La Norris
(36:55):
mentioned that he had been hiredby a guy named Little Louis
to drive a and unconscious womanout of New York and into new Jersey.
I think it was new Jerseythat he was driving her,
and he says that it was DorothyArnold who was later
asked about this,and he changed the details.
So it may not have been a true story.
But it's worth mentioning just becauseif people are interested in the story
(37:18):
and you come into these things,I just want to mention a few of those,
I o and also Francis Arnold, the dad,
he did spend a quarter of $1 milliontrying to find
what happened to his daughter,even though he believed she was killed.
He kept trying to find answers.
And a quarter of $1 million in 1910.
That's $18 trillion. Now.
(37:38):
It's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money, indeed.
So there is a confounding case of DorothyArnold, sorts.
Sean starts questions.
(38:47):
Yeah.
Yeah.
(39:16):
Yeah.
The one thing.
The one thing I'll, I'll add tothat thinking
is because I do this to myselfwhen I go over this story is
you just kind of assumethat she was murdered in the park.
If it was just like a robbery murder,
it doesn't have to be in the parkbecause it's.
It's even though it's a park you can take.
Oh, well, dig the body,
(39:37):
but it's like it
takes time to dig a hole in the park,and people are probably going to see you
doing it.
But what if she had gonethrough the park and.
Or maybe she didn't even enter the park,and maybe she went
into another store and like,she passed somebody selling Rolex watches
and they were like, hey, come over here.
You know, I don't know if Rolex existedin the 1910, but there you go.
Yeah.
So she
she may not have been if it was a killing,it didn't necessarily
(40:00):
have to happen in the park,which could aid the hiding of the body
if it's in an alley or an apartmentor something like that,
there could have been a different wayto dispose of the body or hide it.
But again, that's one of thethere's so many strange things about this
that make this a compelling truecrime case.
Even over 100 years later,
which are all these holes in the storythat we just don't have.
(40:33):
Yeah, yeah.
You don't have it.
We don't have it.
Yeah.
This is athis is a story I started reading about
maybe a year and a half ago,and I was like,
oh, I'll put this on my listas a potential study of strange topics.
And I kept kind of go skirting around itbecause I'm like,
(40:54):
you don't really know a lot.
So it's all just speculation.
But at the end of the day, it'sstill a really interesting story.
That brings up a lot of questionsabout society, about wealth, about
sort of the culture of like highlightingsomeone
like an heiress overall the other missing people Yeah.
That's the other thing too.
Is that like
(41:34):
Yeah.
There are, there are,
Well, on that note, I thank you so muchfor taking the time to do this today.
I love that you're back.
We'll get you on five timesso you can get that coat.
That would be awesome.
And. Yeah, and everybody go backand listen to previous episodes.
(41:55):
The internet mysterieswas one of my early episodes,
and that one for a while wasthe was the highest downloaded episode.
Even though I thought, oh,it's a simple thing, I ran out of ideas.
We'll just do this little story.
It ended up being, a very popular episode.
Yeah.
And honestly,I've been saying I need to do a follow up.
I need you to do a part two of your name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was not.
(42:20):
Yeah, that would be great.
That would be awesome.
Well, thank you again, John,for being on the stream.
Yeah.
All right.
I see.
I think she'd be like 130.
But maybe
(42:41):
Yeah.
You know,maybe maybe it's you. Very well. Might us.
All right.
Thank you again to talk to you soon.
Thank you for listeningto a Study of Strange.
It's the beginning of 2025,and there's a lot of goals for the show
this year to keep improving qualityof content to make additional content,
And the best way to support us doingthat is to make sure you're subscribed
(43:03):
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and some other special goodiescoming up in 2025.
Thank you again for listening.Until next time, good night.
December 12th, 1910.
The date of one of the most mysterious
missing personcases of the early 20th century.
The disappearance of Dorothy Arnold,A young woman seemingly
living the perfect life, a life of luxuryand privilege vanished without a trace.
The 25 yearold heiress bumped into a friend
(00:23):
at fifth Avenueand 27th Street in New York City.
She was in a great moodand excited about the day ahead.
Shopping.
Dorothy bid farewell to her friend
and no one ever saw her again.
This is a study of strange.
(00:57):
Terrible thingshappen to innocent people all the time.
So why did a community take particularinterest in the story of Dorothy Arnold,
a privileged heiress over any other murderor missing persons story at the time?
Could it be our fascination with the rich,the powerful and celebrity culture?
Or does it also stemfrom a subconscious realization
that a tragedy can befallthe rich and powerful?
(01:19):
It can happen to anyone.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Michael May and with me for what?
The third timenow I think, is Sean Anthony Davis.
Yeah. Number three. I'm
Good.
Very good.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, God.
Now, I actually think I should do that.
I should absolutely do that.
(01:41):
I'm going to wait till five.
It's probably going to be yourself.Maybe.
Matt, there's a couple other peoplethat I love to have on.
It is, it is.
Yeah.
No, I appreciate it.
And for those interested, if you're new tothe show, Sean was on an episode
(02:02):
about internet mysteries,which is really fun.
We cover a lot of those and then also, wasit the Superman, The Death of Superman?
So have you ever heard of DorothyArnold before?
Have you heard of this case?
(02:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's a pretty bizarre one for somevery simple kind of reasons, but it did.
I I've I've been attracted to this storyand sort of that true crime
way that people that like thiskind of content, it comes to it.
And that's because there are some strangeaspects, strange aspects to it.
(02:44):
There are mysteriesto this story, but it also
and I do study the strange,
but it also makes methink I haven't really covered
a, I don't think I've covereda missing person before on the show.
I've definitely worked on other projectsthat cover missing people,
but it really, I think, gets into this
very relatable fearthat I think anybody has,
(03:05):
which is a fear of kidnaping,getting lost, Yeah.
No I mean
(03:42):
Yeah.
And something to think about.
Maybe we'll come to this at the end,but it's.
This is a very wealthy person.
This is a socialite.
This is not really akinto, like, Paris Hilton,
but that's just like the first namethat came to my mind in the modern age.
And, you know,we take as a culture, as a society,
we take a lot of attentionwith when someone like that disappears
(04:04):
like I just said before, like thereis this thing about like, wait, wait,
if it can happen to someone like that,then it can happen to any of us.
And so one of my my sort of
questions to posit and think about is,why do we pay
more attention to wealthy peoplewhen something like this happens?
So are you ready for it?
(04:24):
Can we get in? Yeah.
Here's we'll figure it out.
Of course we will. Of course we will.
Dorothy Harriot Camille
Arnold was born on July 1st, 1885.
Arnold was a woman of wealth, privilegeand and ambition.
By all accounts, Dorothywas living a charmed and comfortable life.
She came from a prominent family.
(04:45):
Her father, FrancesArnold, was a wealthy fine goods importer.
Things like, perfume, things like that.
And his family can be tracedback to the Mayflower.
Her uncle was a Supreme Courtjustice, Justice Rufus Peckham,
which is just a great sort of 19thcentury name.
And her mother,Mary Arnold, was a high society member.
(05:07):
And my meaning is,even though this is after the,
quote unquote, Gilded Age,
and if you watched the HBO show,you kind of know about that.
The customs andand society doesn't change overnight.
So even though the Gilded Age
is technically over in 1910,it is still part of New York society
that is still very muchwhat they're living in.
And where I think the your family's
(05:29):
public persona is almost moreimportant than anything else.
Yeah.
And that comes into this storyquite a bit.
And the relationships with other wealthyfamilies, assured, high paying
(05:54):
jobs and society investments, entranceto the best schools and so forth.
And on that note,Dorothy was well-educated.
She graduated from BrynMa College, a liberal liberal arts college
in Pennsylvania.
Afterwards,she returned to her family at home at 108
East 79th Street, and attemptedto begin a career as a writer.
(06:15):
She was not planning to sitand live off her
inheritance, which I thinkis a really cool thing about Dorothy.
She had this passion to pursue herdream career,
but her family was in her way.
So, here's just some brief detailsabout her family.
She had, a brother, Dan Hinckley Arnold.
She had a sister, Marjorie Brewster.
(06:38):
And like I said, her her one of her uncle
or one of her uncles was a Supreme Courtjustice.
Her grandfatherwas a very successful banker,
which is probably wheremost of the wealth was built up from.
Oh, theold East Coast kind of money there.
And then the home at 108 East 79th Street.
It's just off or sort of near Park Avenue,very fancy place, surrounded by other
(07:05):
very fancy people and in large,
wealthy mansions of New York City.
So a few months before she disappeared,Arnold asked her father
if she could have an apartmentin Greenwich Village
because she wantedto focus on her writing.
And we very quickly, Sean got toour recreation scene that we're married.
(07:25):
Yeah.
So this is a scene about,her asking her father
to to essentially move outand to start her career.
Or do you want to read Dorothy or Mr.
Arnold?
Do it, do it.
So I just watched,
(07:45):
Wizard of Oz with my son recentlybecause I was like, you got to see.
You have to see some of these movies.
And so we watched The Wizard of Oz,and I forgot, just because I say, Dorothy,
that's the way I say Dorothy is like,there's not a lot of syllables in there,
but when you watch the movie, I.
Yeah, Dorothy,Dorothy, don't go over that.
Dorothy.
(08:06):
Yeah, I just loved it.
Anyway, that has nothing to dowith Dorothy Arnold.
So here we go.
It's the evening cocktail hour.
Dorothy enters her family's drawing room.
Her father and mothersit silently on a nearby couch, listening
to Dorothy's sister gossip about a friendwho's marrying a simple lawyer
who doesn't come from money.It's terrible.
(08:26):
And she's muttering.
The whole family is dressed to the ninesas they await the dinner bell.
Just an averageevening for the Arnold family.
Dorothy attempts to interrupt.
What is it?
You can speak in front of your family.
(08:49):
Good heavens. Why?
Mr. Arnold laughs.
The sisterand mother begin to chuckle, to.
You don't need an apartmentto write your silly stories.
A good writer writes anywhere.
(09:11):
Professional.
Like a job. Like a poor person.
No child of mine will have a job.
It would embarrass the family name.
You've been reading too many progressivemagazines.
Besides, I don't think there's ever beena professional girl writer.
(09:32):
Sure, honey.
And one day we'll all have telephonesthat fit inside our pockets. No.
She Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, look, the transatlanticis very close to that general
British sound, so, Yeah, as much as it's a silly story,
(09:52):
this is a very serious caseand very real people.
So it is.
I always have this hesitation of like,oh, God, we just made fun of these people,
and they're about to go through somethingvery harrowing and terrible.
But I do like to kind of poke funat this high society
kind of thinking that she lived in.
And it very much may have had an effect onher and may be tied into a theory
(10:14):
that comes up about what may have happenedto her and her father did.
This is a, a quote from himis that you don't like a write.
A good writer can write anywhere.
You don't need an apartment.
And that is what he told her that day.
So instead of moving into an apartment,Dorothy stayed home.
However, it didn't stop her from writing.
She got to work,and she wrote a short story
called Poinsettia Flames, whichshe submitted to the magazine McClure's.
(10:37):
It was rejected,and her family reportedly began
teasing her about it in her attemptto, like, write a story and be a writer.
And that still didn't stop her.
She continued to write,
and we know that she wrote at leastone more story called Lotus Leaves.
I've heard a few different thingsabout this story when, during research,
some people say that it was submittedto McClure's and rejected again.
(10:59):
I've also heard that
it was submitted to other placesand they just never heard back.
So if listeners,if you know the story of Dorothy Arnold
and have some more specificsabout what happened
with more of her writing,email me a study of strange at gmail.com.
I would love to,get clarification on that.
So this leads us tothe day of the disappearance.
(11:20):
On December 12th, 1910.
Dorothy Arnold walked down stairswearing a long blue coat
with a large velvet hat,a muff, and a purse.
A I call this a tailored suit.
It was around 11 a.m.
her mother was not in the best of healthand barely left the house
at this time,and she asked Dorothy what she was doing.
(11:40):
Dorothy said that she was planning
to spend the day shopping, primarilyto buy an evening dress for her sister's
coming out party, or the debutante party,which was coming up,
and her mother actually did suggestthat she should come,
go with Dorothyto go shopping to escort her.
And Dorothy said, no, no, no, no, not now.
I want to go by myself.
And she left her mom at home.
(12:00):
And according to the Arnold family, later,Dorothy
had approximately 25to $30 of cash in her possession.
This is about $1,000 today,so she had a good deal of money on her.
Yeah.
And she we know that she visited the Park
and Tilford store at the corner of FifthAvenue and 59th Street.
She charged a half pound box of chocolatesto her families account.
(12:23):
Good for her left chocolate.
This is around noonand she placed it in her muff.
And then she walked 22 blocks,which is 1.4 miles
south to Brentano s bookstore on FifthAvenue near Rockefeller Center.
While at Brentano,Arnold purchased Engaged Girl
Sketches, a book of essaysby Emily Calvin Blake.
(12:43):
Witnesses, and I believe the witnesseswere all like employees of these shops,
said that Dorothy was niceand she didn't show any unusual behavior
outside of that bookstore.
Arnold ran into a female friend,Gladys King.
King recalled that the two spoke brieflyabout Marjorie's upcoming debutante party,
Marjorie's the sister, and that Arnoldseemed to be in good spirits.
(13:06):
Gladys had her acceptanceletter to the party, her RSVP on her,
so she actually handed it to Dorothyand made a joke about saving postage.
Like, oh, I don't have to pay for a stampif I give this to you now and then.
King said that that, she had to meet hermother for lunch at the Waldorf Astoria.
So she left some accounts.
Get this mixed upand say that Dorothy was like,
(13:28):
oh, I have to meet my mom at the WaldorfAstoria for brunch and left.
But it's actually Gladys that was like,I have to meet my mom.
I'll talk to you later.
Gladys said that Arnold mentionedthat she was going to walk home
through Central Park.
They waved goodbyeand there are no published reports
or witness accountsor sightings of Dorothy Arnold officially
(13:50):
after this, no one ever saw Dorothy again
as she walked away from her friend.
Any initial questions or comments?
Very, very astute question.
(14:13):
She did, and we're going to,if you don't mind, I'm
going to come to thatin a little bit later.
That is a great question.
And something that I thinkthe family immediately
sort of and work towards publicly.
A lot of people don't think that peoplethat the family was aware,
but they very muchwere aware of a gentleman suitor.
I'll mention this as well,even though it's 1910.
(14:34):
Just to give some perspectivehere, it's still a huge city.
There's a lot of people in New Yorkand she is in a central area
that is bustling there.
It's daytime, it's noon, it's lunchtime,there's people everywhere.
And that's one of the set of circumstancesthat makes this a very strange
story, because there's literallyno more witnesses that you can trust
(14:54):
after this. And.
Correct.
None of that is ever found.
And that's, a peculiar thing.
And there's more peculiar,strange things that come up in this story.
(15:14):
So by early evening, Arthur failed to.
Arnold. Excuse me.
Arnold, not Arthur.
Arnold failed to return home for dinner.
She rarely missed dinnerwithout informing her family.
And the family.
They they got worried, and they startedcalling Dorothy's friends and asking
if anybody had seen her or was with herand they couldn't figure out anything.
Shortly after midnight on December 13th,
(15:36):
Elsie Henry, one of Arnold's friends,phoned the family to check in and be like,
hey, did she ever come homethat you may find her?
And Henry saidthat later said that Arnold's mother
answered the telephoneand said that Dorothy had returned home.
She had a headache and she went to bed.
Dorothy was not home.
And this is an odd move, onethat I actually do
(15:57):
have some some thinkingthat that some motivation behind that.
But it definitely drawssuspicion to the family
and that something strange is going on.
The next morningthey made another odd choice.
They didn't call the police.
Dorothy is still not home.
They called insteadDorothy's brother's friend named John
(16:18):
S Keith, who was a lawyer.
Keith also was a friend of Dorothy's.
He had known her for some time,friend of the whole family's, really,
and they intended to ask Keith to,basically
become like a private investigatorfor Dorothy.
And that's essentially what he did.
And so these odd moves,
again,kind of create this, this feeling of,
(16:41):
I guess, just suspicion for the family.
Something is off and.
Yeah, yeah.
Why why call the lawyer frame to, to golook for Dorothy instead of the police?
And the truth here.
This is where I think there is.
It does explain it a little bit.
You can still have suspicion. That'sperfectly normal and fine.
(17:03):
And who knows, maybe they did havesomething to do with this.
But the truth is that in their societyclass, thinking of the time,
they didn't want media attentionand it could be socially embarrassing.
And it's speculatedthat the family was influenced by the 1909
disappearance of Adelle Bowes,who was a 13 year old girl
who was reportedmissing from Central Park,
(17:25):
and she was laterfound to have run away to Boston.
So she survived.
She was alive and she ran away,essentially to prove to her parents,
like, hey, I'm 13,I can do stuff on my own.
Let me go to the house.
And the Bose family were alsoa prominent Upper East Side family,
and they were scandalizedin the newspapers.
They were scandalizedin the inner circles of their friends,
(17:47):
and the Arnold familydidn't want any of that.
And also,if they're looking if they knew that story
and they were really influencedby it, like people suspect
this Adelle Bowes came home.
So part of them was like,well, she'll she'll come home.
So and we don't wantwe don't want to cause a fuss and get
scandalized by our friends and newspaperswhen she just comes
(18:07):
home.
(18:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially if you think.
Hey look, she's she's gone outand maybe this gentleman suitor
that you were going to find out about,maybe they're like oh God.
Did she like, you know, see this this guy.
So it makes sense to me.
It makes sense to me.
It's still very odd,but it makes sense to me now.
John Keith, the lawyer who becamelike an investigator, he honestly
(19:02):
did a pretty good job of it, even thoughhe's not really an investigator.
He went to hospitals,morgues, apartment buildings,
halfwayhouse is all over like the northeast.
He was like calling uponall these different places.
Could not find her.Oh, and let me back up to.
He first went into her roomand they found that all of her clothes,
all of her belongings, with the exceptionof what she had on her, were there.
(19:23):
So jewelry, clothing, shoes,all that kind of stuff.
There were personal letters on her desk.
Some of them had foreign postmarks.
That's important to think aboutbecause that could be a clue to something.
There's also information for transAtlantic Ocean liners,
and there were burnedpapers in the fireplace.
Now, a lot of people presume thatthe burned papers were like manuscripts.
(19:45):
Her short storythat may have been rejected.
So she was mad and burned it.
That is purely speculation.
Everybody just like,oh, it's a thing that she didn't.
It could have been a letterfrom a boyfriend.
It could have it literally could have justbeen like, oh, the fire's dying out.
I want to keep it going.
Let me put some of this paper in itso no one knows for sure.
But people do like to speculateon these things as they should,
(20:07):
because these could be clueslegitimately to what happened to her.
Keith also talked to the shopkeepers,
places that she went shopping,all that kind of stuff.
Really couldn't get anywhere becausehe couldn't find out anything about her.
So he, he convinced the familyto hire the Pinkertons,
the Pinkerton detective agency.
And I'm sure that name ringsa bell to people.
(20:27):
Especially if you watch old Westerns.
The Pinkertons are always showing up.
A lot of times they're bad guys
because they did have a lot of powerat this period of time.
And in the Old West time, but they're a legitimate private
detective agency,and they're still around.
That's the amazing.
Yeah, Pinkerton agency is still around.
Yeah.
And, as much as they sometimes could be,
(20:48):
sort of,have had way too much power back then.
They were investigators andthey kind of knew what they were doing.
So they also went to more morguesand hospitals and halfway houses,
sanatoriums and did their did their searchto see if she turned up
anywhere, couldn't find her.
And they finally convinced thefamily to call the police.
(21:12):
You know,no police had ever been notified.
And yeah, so so Frances Arnold'sDorothy's dad finally calls the police.
Now I did find some clarificationbecause I read a lot about this story
and everything
says they never called the policeuntil the Pinkertons convinced them.
The police departmentsdidn't know about Dorothy, and.
And it's a sort of a minor thing,but the Pinkerton Agency,
(21:34):
being actual investigators,notified a lot of police departments
on the East Coastin case she had turned up anywhere.
So they were aware, but they couldn'tformally start an investigation
until the family was,like, reported her missing officially.
So the police convinced the Arnolds to dosomething that they thought would help,
which is enlist the public's help,which they didn't want to do.
So this is a few weeks aftershe went missing and they held a press
(21:58):
conference on January 25th, 1911.
Reporters came and FrancesArnold told them all
about the disappearanceand offered a $1,000 reward.
He also made a cryptic,somewhat pessimistic comment
where he claimed thathe thought his daughter had been killed
like that was,and that was a little bit of him
just trying to tryingto figure out the facts.
(22:20):
And one answer is of like,she was walking home.
She may have been through Central Park.She was probably killed.
But obviously as a parent,you still want to know.
And you know.
Yeah.
And hereI actually have a quote that he said.
So this is a quote from, from Franceshere,
assuming that she walked up homethrough Central Park,
(22:42):
she could have taken the lonely walkalong the reservoir there
because of the laxityof police supervision over the park.
I believe it's quite possible thatshe might have been murdered by Garrett
and her body thrown into the lakeor the reservoir.
Atrocious things do happen there.
There seems to be no justificationfor them.
(23:05):
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes it does.
And there are parts of Central Parkeven today where you can find yourself
(23:25):
not surrounded by people.
And I was I was in Central Park,I don't know,
four months ago, five months ago,something like that.
And we definitely we ended upin some spots that we were like,
oh, it's secluded and it doesn't feel likeCentral Park here.
And it was probably moreso that back in 1910, over 100 years ago,
I will clarify something.
She mentioned the reservoir.
She could have been dumpedin the reservoir.
(23:46):
It was actually frozen over at the time
so she could not have been dumpedin the reservoir.
But that doesn't mean
she could not have been sort of attacked,robbed and killed in the park.
Now, this is when after the.
Yeah.
This announcement to the public,the newspapers
and it's stuff like thisthat they're investigating this.
It starts to get a lot of attention.
(24:06):
And it comes to lightthat Dorothy had a gentleman friend,
a George Griscom junior, who she had metwhile she was attending Bryn Mawr College.
He's a 42 year old engineerat the time from Pennsylvania.
Reporters also discoveredthat Arnold had lied to her parents,
like months prior to the disappearanceand that she, she had told her parents
(24:30):
she was going to go visit a friend,Theodora Bates, in Boston.
However, when she went to Boston,she ended up spending a week
with Griscom in a hotel, actually,two different hotels.
I don't know why theythey, like, moved to hotels in the middle.
Could have been for gossip reasonsor whatever, I don't know.
But they stayed in two different hotelsand spent a whole week together.
And during this trip, she also pawned$500 worth of jewelry for $60.
(24:54):
And I can imagine hernot being really worried
about the full value of the moneybecause she's wealthy.
It's more of she needs spending cash,
and she doesn't want to ask her parentsfor cash
and there's no credit cards back then,
and she's in a different city,so it's like, I need cash.
I don't want them to know what I'm doing,
so I'm just going to pawn off this jewelry
and have some money to spend whileI'm hanging out with my boyfriend.
(25:18):
And yeah, it looks it sounded likeyou were about to say something.
I paused.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(25:40):
Oh, yeah.
I would assume.
Yeah,
1000 $2,000.
I would totally eat some thousand dollarchocolates, but I'm not going to spend
the money. I.
(26:03):
Yes, yes.
So, Yeah, I'll, I'll jump aheada little bit.
Here,let me mention one other thing real quick.
So around Thanksgiving, Dorothy
went to visit her friend Theodora again,but this time for real.
And this ties into George Griscom,which is why
I wanted to share this real quick.
So while she was with her friend,she was supposed to stay throughout,
(26:26):
like the Thanksgiving weekend or whatever,but she ended up leaving early
like she left far earlier than her familythat she was going to leave.
And then Theodora thought she would leave
and it's because sheshe got a letter from someone overseas,
and she then sort of like,wasn't in the best of mood and left.
Now again, this is all speculation,but people assume it was correspondence
(26:47):
from Griscom because Griscom eventuallyleft the country.
He was actually out of the countrywhen she went missing.
He was, touring Europe with his family.
So a lot of people speculatethat this letter came from Griscom.
Maybe he was breaking up with her
or something like that,and she got upset and left.
Again. We don't know.We don't know what was in that letter.
We don't know whoit was from. And we asked.
(27:10):
Absolutely.
We also foundout that they had been writing letters
even after this to each other.
So if it was from him,I don't think they broke up.
Or if they did, it didn't end upcontinuing to be like this bad thing.
So this is to this is to go and say that,
yes, they investigated,the gentleman friend
and he was in Florence, Italy,at the time of the disappearance.
(27:32):
A fantastic alibi.
But it's true.
He was he was completely out of town,and the family actually reached out to him
by telegram almost immediatelyafter the disappearance to ask
if he had any information about her.
Did she disappear?Was she traveling to meet him?
He said he didn't know anything about it.
He didn't know about the disappearance.
She wasn't planning to come see him inJanuary.
(27:53):
In 1911, Dorothy's motherand her brother went to the source.
They went to Griscom in Italyto talk to him directly, probably
also thinking maybe Dorothy's thereand they're trying to keep it secret.
So they go to Italy.
He's like, look, I don't know anything.
I'll do what I can to help.
And that same month,the San Francisco Chronicle reported
(28:15):
that hotel clerks
at the hotel where Griscom was stayingsaid that a veiled woman and a young man
came to see Griscom, and rumors persistas a veiled woman was Dorothy.
However.
That's right.
At the same time the mom went to visit.
So I would, I would posit,and I think other people do as well,
that the veiled womanwas actually Dorothy's
mom and her brothercoming to ask about Dorothy.
(28:37):
But again, we don't know, like people
haven't tried that togetherspecifically to confirm at all yet.
At some point following the disappearance,the Arnold family received two ransom
notes from quote unquote Kidnapers,who demanded $5,000 for Arnold's return.
These proved to be hoaxes,and in fact, I'm a little surprised
that they only received two such notes,because normally
those kind of things happen a lot.
(28:57):
Sadly, when these kind of stories happen.
Also, someone wrote a postcard that's,
that was postmarked from New York, andit said it was from Dorothy to her family.
And it just said, I'm safe.
And it was written in quote unquotefemale handwriting.
But people also believed that this wassome sort of prank or hoax as well.
(29:18):
So in February,Griscom made it back stateside,
and he immediately started helpingto try to find her on the ground.
He traveled around.
He again, similar thingas, like the Private Eyes did,
where he went to morgues and hospitalsand sanatoriums, and he looked around.
He also started publishing personal ads
begging Dorothy to contact himif she was around.
(29:38):
But she was never found again. Sean.
Which I know I've said a lot,but it is worth hitting again
that no one still to this dayknows what happened to Dorothy Arnold.
And there's so much in this casethat leads to confusion.
The family not content, not contactingthe police to investigate it immediately.
Everybody knows the first 48 hoursare like the most crucial
(30:01):
and missing person cases.
The weirdness of, like,she went through Central Park,
which is in the center of New York City,surrounded by people,
but there's no witnessesto anything that happened to her.
And I think that's the big one to me,is that there's no witnesses.
There's no one that's like there.
No, I will say there are some witnessesthroughout history,
(30:21):
even years after this, that like,think they saw Dorothy.
But a lot of that is just like it'sone of those things of like,
I went into the movietheater and I saw that.
Where's the other old woman?
And it's like, wait, where? What?
But there's no real validityto any of those.
But on that day,there's definitely no witness sightings.
No ones.
Like, I think I saw
a woman dressed in fancy thingswhen I was walking my dog in the park,
(30:42):
and she was headed thatway. There's none of that.
Yeah.
(31:04):
Yeah.
It's.
And like you, you asked about earlierthan muff was never found.
The shoes, the coat, the chocolates that,like nothing was found.
And so let me dive into the theoriesfor you, Sean.
So these are the main theories.
There are more theories.
And if you listeners have any,let me know about it.
one of the main theories, suicide
(31:25):
driven by the rejection or rejectionsthat she had from attempting
to be a writer,followed by the bullying from her family.
A lot of people think that this may havehad a very I'm sure it did have some kind
of hugely emotionaland psychological reaction and maybe
she was not in the best headspacebecause of that and committed suicide.
(31:46):
And there's a little bit, of informationaround this that people
put as not necessarily evidence,but maybe like fuel to this,
which is that Griscom, her boyfriend'scousin, had committed suicide.
Dorothyprobably knew all the details of that,
and it could have had an impact on her.
Maybe that was in the back of her headand she's like,
okay, I'm never going to be ableto do what I want to do.
My family doesn't like my boyfriend.
(32:07):
I'm not becoming a writer.
I'm just going to end it all.
I will say there are a lot of thingsgoing against it.
She was very excited about the partycoming up.
She was excited to be shopping,buying the book, buying a dress.
She we don't knowif she ever bought the dress.
In fact, she probably didn'tbecause they went to all the stores, but
she was planning to buy a dress.
(32:27):
So yeah, there's there's a lot of thingsthat I don't think necessarily
point to suicide, butI can definitely believe it to a certain
extent.
Right, right.
(32:50):
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah.
She didn't jump off the Empire StateBuilding, as you would know about it.
She didn't. Yeah.
And and also I would imagine
like she had it she was an opinionated,sort of driven person.
I would imagine most suicide, I believemost suicides people leave a note
(33:11):
or something around to be like,this is why this happened.
And I could I could see somebody like her
writing some kind of spiteful messageto her family, you know, like,
I don't want to presume too much, but,
you know,it's like I could see a note of some kind
in that situation, which obviouslythey didn't they never found.
So another theory
(33:32):
that also has some plausibility toit is pregnancy.
So some have suggestedthat she may have been pregnant
and she either left over the shame of thisor she went to an illegal abortionist
and then may have diedduring the operation.
And that happened a lot back thenand when it typically happened,
because it's an illegal operation, peoplealso hide the body.
(33:53):
So that is one scenario.
The boyfriend didn't seem toto give some way, but also he may not
have known, much like if she was pregnant,she may have kept it a secret.
So it's all an assumption,but it is a plausible
assumption based on society,the world and and stuff like that.
At the time.
The other main
theory isthat she ran away for similar reasons too,
(34:16):
for like the suicide she's upset with,her family wants to make it on her own.
I don't like the runaway theory.
Because she had it.
We already know that
she pawned jewelry to, like, get cashwhen she was out of town.
She didn't want anythinglike stuff of hers was left at home.
If she was going to do that,I would have taken all the jewelry.
I would have taken my expensive pursesand handbags.
And yeah.
(34:41):
Yes, exactly, exactly.
So that's where I run into some issuesabout that.
There are there is some other evidenceout there that I just
it's, it's people that followthe case will know it.
It's I don't think it's necessarily worthgetting into today
where like
she had other things of value on herand she may have had some other cash
somewhere else.
And this kind of stuff, but still, I thinkshe would have taken more from home
(35:03):
if that was the case.
And what I think my my personal theory
is similar to her father'sthat she was either kidnaped or killed.
And look, everything that we'retalking about here is conjecture.
That's why this is so mysterious.
But one simple scenario
that I think is the most plausibleis the kidnaped or killed scenario.
(35:25):
And that's because she was walking homethrough Central Park.
Like I already mentioned,
there are secluded areaswhere a woman in fine attire alone
could have been attacked to maybe likelyjust to be robbed.
That could have been the motivation.
And but, you know, killed and robbedand then the body hidden.
There is a you know,there are other ways to hide bodies
(35:46):
or get bodies out of the park and stuff.
It's hard, but it was it still can happen.
And, yeah.
So at the end of the day,those are the main theories.
But, an innocent person went missing
and there's no evidence,no key witnesses or suspects.
And it's one that still hauntsNew York City to this day.
(36:09):
I'm going to addjust a little bit of specifics
to a couple of these theoriesbefore we we finish up.
John one one is that in 1916,there's a doctor
that was running an illegal abortionclinic named Doctor Archie Lutz,
and he testifiedto the New York County district attorney
that he thinks Arnoldlike he operated on Arnold.
(36:30):
And she died.
And there were some peoplein the district attorney's office
that I thinkalso believed that to be true.
However,
there's there's some there's
some detectives that have said like, no,no, no, no, it wasn't it wasn't Arnold.
We know that situation.
And it sort of sort of brush it off.
Also in 1916,a convicted felon named Edward La Norris
(36:55):
mentioned that he had been hiredby a guy named Little Louis
to drive a and unconscious womanout of New York and into new Jersey.
I think it was new Jerseythat he was driving her,
and he says that it was DorothyArnold who was later
asked about this,and he changed the details.
So it may not have been a true story.
But it's worth mentioning just becauseif people are interested in the story
(37:18):
and you come into these things,I just want to mention a few of those,
I o and also Francis Arnold, the dad,
he did spend a quarter of $1 milliontrying to find
what happened to his daughter,even though he believed she was killed.
He kept trying to find answers.
And a quarter of $1 million in 1910.
That's $18 trillion. Now.
(37:38):
It's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money, indeed.
So there is a confounding case of DorothyArnold, sorts.
Sean starts questions.
(38:47):
Yeah.
Yeah.
(39:16):
Yeah.
The one thing.
The one thing I'll, I'll add tothat thinking
is because I do this to myselfwhen I go over this story is
you just kind of assumethat she was murdered in the park.
If it was just like a robbery murder,
it doesn't have to be in the parkbecause it's.
It's even though it's a park you can take.
Oh, well, dig the body,
(39:37):
but it's like it
takes time to dig a hole in the park,and people are probably going to see you
doing it.
But what if she had gonethrough the park and.
Or maybe she didn't even enter the park,and maybe she went
into another store and like,she passed somebody selling Rolex watches
and they were like, hey, come over here.
You know, I don't know if Rolex existedin the 1910, but there you go.
Yeah.
So she
she may not have been if it was a killing,it didn't necessarily
(40:00):
have to happen in the park,which could aid the hiding of the body
if it's in an alley or an apartmentor something like that,
there could have been a different wayto dispose of the body or hide it.
But again, that's one of thethere's so many strange things about this
that make this a compelling truecrime case.
Even over 100 years later,
which are all these holes in the storythat we just don't have.
(40:33):
Yeah, yeah.
You don't have it.
We don't have it.
Yeah.
This is athis is a story I started reading about
maybe a year and a half ago,and I was like,
oh, I'll put this on my listas a potential study of strange topics.
And I kept kind of go skirting around itbecause I'm like,
(40:54):
you don't really know a lot.
So it's all just speculation.
But at the end of the day, it'sstill a really interesting story.
That brings up a lot of questionsabout society, about wealth, about
sort of the culture of like highlightingsomeone
like an heiress overall the other missing people Yeah.
That's the other thing too.
Is that like
(41:34):
Yeah.
There are, there are,
Well, on that note, I thank you so muchfor taking the time to do this today.
I love that you're back.
We'll get you on five timesso you can get that coat.
That would be awesome.
And. Yeah, and everybody go backand listen to previous episodes.
(41:55):
The internet mysterieswas one of my early episodes,
and that one for a while wasthe was the highest downloaded episode.
Even though I thought, oh,it's a simple thing, I ran out of ideas.
We'll just do this little story.
It ended up being, a very popular episode.
Yeah.
And honestly,I've been saying I need to do a follow up.
I need you to do a part two of your name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was not.
(42:20):
Yeah, that would be great.
That would be awesome.
Well, thank you again, John,for being on the stream.
Yeah.
All right.
I see.
I think she'd be like 130.
But maybe
(42:41):
Yeah.
You know,maybe maybe it's you. Very well. Might us.
All right.
Thank you again to talk to you soon.
Thank you for listeningto a Study of Strange.
It's the beginning of 2025,and there's a lot of goals for the show
this year to keep improving qualityof content to make additional content,
And the best way to support us doingthat is to make sure you're subscribed
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