Podcasts · Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

MoNo Encore: The Mysterious Disappearance of Bobby Dunbar w/ Tal McThenia

10 Jul 2026 · 1 h 34 min

(Orig pub date: 3/28/23) In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing in the Louisiana swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recogniz­able. A wandering piano tuner was arrested and charged with kidnapping— a crime then punishable by death.

But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as her son, not the lost Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South.

My guest, Tal McThenia, first introduced listeners of NPR's This American Life to this case in 2008. A few years later he co-wrote, along with Margaret Dunbar Cutright (the granddaughter of Bobby Dunbar) the definitive book about this historical whodunnit, called "A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation".

The author's website: https://www.talmcthenia.com/

Listen to This American Life's "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar" here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/transcript

The author's Audubon article: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/fall-2021/the-strange-true-story-john-williams-and-charles

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Links in the notes 5

• https://www.talmcthenia.com/
• https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/transcript
• https://www.audubon.org/magazine/fall-2021/the-strange-true-story-john-williams-and-charles
• https://www.quince.com/notorious
• https://megaphone.fm/adchoices