# The Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 15 Oct 2026, 42 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/bdf36b41-bcb8-4ce8-9e94-b4e301268c65/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

When socialite Dorothy Arnold disappeared in 1910, no one imagined the case would remain forever unsolved. Today we tell her story. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:06] Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
[0:13] Speaker 2: and Jerry's here, too. And we've got our sleuth suits on,
[0:18] Speaker 2: which are really revealing, ultra-tight rubber suits.
[0:23] Speaker 3: Gross.
[0:23] Speaker 2: And the reason we're wearing our sleuth suits today is
[0:26] Speaker 2: because this is an unsolved mystery edition of Stuff You
[0:30] Speaker 2: Should Know.
[0:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I haven't done one of these
[0:33] Speaker 3: in a little while. And this is sort of one
[0:36] Speaker 3: of the original Missing Persons editions because I think this
[0:41] Speaker 3: is the oldest Missing Persons case in New York City.
[0:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I understand it is too, which suggests
[0:48] Speaker 2: that it's still on the books as an open investigation.
[0:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's the reveal. They haven't solved this one.
[0:57] Speaker 2: No, which, I mean, we kind of gave that away
[1:00] Speaker 2: when I said it was an unsolved mystery edition.
[1:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. Yeah, good point.
[1:04] Speaker 2: Or are we just jerking everybody's chain right now? You'll
[1:07] Speaker 2: have to listen all the way through to find out.
[1:10] Speaker 1: That's right.
[1:11] Speaker 3: This is the sad story of the mysterious disappearance of
[1:15] Speaker 3: Dorothy Arnold, who was a New York socialite in the
[1:19] Speaker 3: early 1900s who disappeared in 1910, never to be seen again.
[1:21] Speaker 1: No.
[1:25] Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why it's just so it's still,
[1:29] Speaker 2: you know, being talked about literally right now is because
[1:33] Speaker 2: it is one of the most baffling disappearance cases I've
[1:36] Speaker 2: ever heard of. Yeah. Like there was there is not
[1:40] Speaker 2: a single shred of evidence that ever turned up that
[1:43] Speaker 2: suggested what happened to her. Nothing. Every tip that came in,
[1:47] Speaker 2: every suggestion, every idea, nothing ever panned out. She just
[1:51] Speaker 2: vanished without a trace in the middle of. I think
[1:55] Speaker 2: at the time, the busiest city in the world.
[1:58] Speaker 1: Yeah. Should we get into it? Yeah. All right.
[2:03] Speaker 3: Well, she was born Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold, and she
[2:07] Speaker 3: was a rich kid from a very well-heeled family. She
[2:11] Speaker 3: was a daughter of a perfume importer named Francis Arnold,
[2:15] Speaker 3: and she had a lineage that goes back to the Mayflower.
[2:19] Speaker 3: Her uncle was a Supreme Court justice, Rufus W.
[2:22] Speaker 1: Peckham.
[2:24] Speaker 3: And she studied literature in college at, how do you
[2:27] Speaker 3: pronounce that, Bryn Mawr College?
[2:30] Speaker 2: You nailed it. You've been brushing up on your Welsh.
[2:33] Speaker 3: She fancied herself a writer, and as we'll see, it's
[2:35] Speaker 3: not something her parents approved of. But yeah, she was
[2:39] Speaker 3: living with her family uptown, right?
[2:42] Speaker 2: Yes, on East 79th Street. She lived two blocks down
[2:47] Speaker 2: from where Emily Post would live a decade later.
[2:51] Speaker 1: Fascinating.
[2:52] Speaker 2: I thought it was kind of fascinating, too. It's almost
[2:54] Speaker 2: like looking at a map of New York and just
[2:56] Speaker 2: seeing two phantoms overlapping.
[2:59] Speaker 1: Okay.
[3:01] Speaker 2: Anyway, yes, she lived in a mansion on East 79th.
[3:06] Speaker 2: I think it's still there. I think it's 108 East
[3:10] Speaker 2: 79th Street, and it is pretty well-heeled, and it was
[3:13] Speaker 2: back then, too. Her family was well-to-do, like you said,
[3:17] Speaker 2: well-connected New York society, but she was a bit of
[3:20] Speaker 2: a black sheep of the family. She, like you said,
[3:23] Speaker 2: fancied herself a writer, and she kind of wanted to
[3:26] Speaker 2: go live a bohemian life in Greenwich Village. And I
[3:29] Speaker 2: think in a good early reveal of her personality and
[3:34] Speaker 2: how she grew up, and she asked her father, can
[3:37] Speaker 2: I get an apartment in Greenwich Village? And he said, no.
[3:40] Speaker 2: In no uncertain terms, no. And then he added a
[3:43] Speaker 2: little chide in there too. He's like, you want to
[3:45] Speaker 2: be a writer? A writer should be able to write anywhere.
[3:48] Speaker 2: And apparently her family was really mean about this ambition
[3:52] Speaker 2: of hers because they wanted to knock it out of
[3:54] Speaker 2: her so she would go get married and have kids
[3:56] Speaker 2: and do what women were supposed to do back then. Yeah.
[3:59] Speaker 3: I mean, she even went so far as to submit stories.
[4:03] Speaker 3: She submitted a couple of them for publication in McClure's magazine.
[4:08] Speaker 3: They rejected one. We don't know about the other, but
[4:11] Speaker 3: her family literally made fun of her for doing this
[4:13] Speaker 3: kind of thing, such that she felt the need to
[4:17] Speaker 3: keep it a secret moving forward.
[4:19] Speaker 1: So she got a P.O.
[4:20] Speaker 3: Box so she could kind of have these secret correspondences
[4:23] Speaker 3: when she submitted to magazines. And that brings us to December,
[4:28] Speaker 3: December 12th, specifically of 1910, the day she disappeared when she.
[4:33] Speaker 1: Went dress shopping.
[4:34] Speaker 3: She was going to go buy a dress for her
[4:36] Speaker 3: sister's debutante ball and initially told a friend she was
[4:40] Speaker 3: taking her mother, Mary, with her, but then told her mom, like, hey,
[4:44] Speaker 3: I want to shop by myself. I'll let you know
[4:46] Speaker 3: if I find a dress and you can check it out.
[4:49] Speaker 3: And this is when we should probably mention that some
[4:51] Speaker 3: people were saying that Mary wasn't in great health. And
[4:56] Speaker 3: she may not have been, but there were some sort
[4:58] Speaker 3: of confusing aspects to that as we move forward.
[5:02] Speaker 2: For sure. And I wonder if that's one of those
[5:04] Speaker 2: things where It got people heard snippets over time and
[5:08] Speaker 2: that got worked into later. Yeah, maybe.
[5:11] Speaker 1: Yeah. Or maybe it was blown out of proportion. Who knows?
[5:14] Speaker 2: For sure. But at any rate, she went by herself
[5:17] Speaker 2: dress shopping and she had about thirty dollars in cash,
[5:20] Speaker 2: which is close to a grand today. And that was
[5:22] Speaker 2: a quarter of her monthly allowance. She was all done
[5:25] Speaker 2: up like a society. Twenty five year old would be
[5:29] Speaker 2: at the time. She looked like a Gibson girl. She
[5:32] Speaker 2: had a fox muffler. you know, for her hands, because
[5:36] Speaker 2: this is December in New York, of course, and supposedly
[5:38] Speaker 2: it was a beautiful day, but still quite cold. And
[5:41] Speaker 2: she ended up walking 50 blocks down to 27th Street
[5:46] Speaker 2: in the end, down Fifth Avenue. And she never stopped
[5:50] Speaker 2: at a dress shop. She stopped at two other places.
[5:52] Speaker 2: But as far as anyone's ever known, she didn't pop
[5:55] Speaker 2: into any dress shop, even though that's supposedly what she
[5:58] Speaker 2: had left to go do that morning.
[6:00] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[6:00] Speaker 3: And I also feel like that's one of those things.
[6:03] Speaker 3: It's like, She could have very well popped into dress
[6:05] Speaker 3: shops and people had not known that.
[6:08] Speaker 1: She did that.
[6:09] Speaker 2: It's possible.
[6:10] Speaker 3: Because, you know, it's like an old case.
[6:12] Speaker 1: So you have to sort of take some of these
[6:14] Speaker 1: things with a grain of salt.
[6:16] Speaker 3: We do know that she didn't take like her passport
[6:19] Speaker 3: and she left her jewels at home. So nothing was
[6:21] Speaker 3: shady as in like, hey, she was about to go
[6:24] Speaker 3: skip town or anything like that or try and go
[6:26] Speaker 3: overseas because that would become a theory at some point.
[6:31] Speaker 1: She bought chocolates.
[6:33] Speaker 3: And a book at another shop and charged it to
[6:36] Speaker 3: her dad's account, which some people say may mean she
[6:39] Speaker 3: was might have been looking to take a trip. But again,
[6:43] Speaker 3: she also just might have wanted a book and some chocolates.
[6:46] Speaker 2: Sure. But but yeah, I've seen it pointed out, like
[6:48] Speaker 2: if if you fly in an airplane today, you get
[6:50] Speaker 2: a snack in the book. And that's like what you
[6:53] Speaker 2: do when you're going on a trip. Right.
[6:55] Speaker 1: I mean, I've never done it, but you've.
[6:57] Speaker 2: Seen people do it in movies, though. Sure.
[7:00] Speaker 1: It's a thing.
[7:01] Speaker 3: But like I said, this is where I think people
[7:03] Speaker 3: like read so much into everything. Like she bought chocolate.
[7:06] Speaker 3: So she was going on a steamer ship.
[7:08] Speaker 2: Sure. And she bought chocolates, by the way, at Pilford
[7:12] Speaker 2: and some bonbons. Isn't that the greatest name of a
[7:16] Speaker 2: business you've ever heard?
[7:17] Speaker 1: It's pretty good.
[7:18] Speaker 3: So she runs into a friend and says, hey, you know,
[7:23] Speaker 3: they kind of catch up a little bit. She does
[7:26] Speaker 3: mention one detail, which she was looking forward to, like
[7:28] Speaker 3: some Christmas gift that was coming up. Another sort of
[7:32] Speaker 3: clue that she wasn't like planning on skipping town or something.
[7:35] Speaker 3: And she told the friend, like, I'm going to go
[7:38] Speaker 3: through Central Park on the way home. And that was
[7:40] Speaker 3: the last person to ever see her alive.
[7:42] Speaker 2: Yeah. That was in, I think, the afternoon. Did you
[7:47] Speaker 2: say about 2 p.m.? I did. So by the time
[7:51] Speaker 2: dinner came, her family started to get worried because apparently
[7:54] Speaker 2: she did not miss a meal, um, without alerting her
[7:57] Speaker 2: family that she wasn't going to be home for that meal.
[8:00] Speaker 2: So that was very out of character for her. And
[8:02] Speaker 2: then as night fell, they started to get worried enough
[8:04] Speaker 2: that they gambled scandal by calling her friends and kind
[8:09] Speaker 2: of surreptitiously asking if anybody had seen her without saying
[8:13] Speaker 2: we haven't seen her out outright, because this was the
[8:16] Speaker 2: time where like, if, if, uh, uh, unmarried girl, 25
[8:22] Speaker 2: from a wealthy family was suddenly missing. That was scandalous.
[8:26] Speaker 2: So her family had this on their mind throughout this
[8:29] Speaker 2: entire disappearance.
[8:31] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
[8:32] Speaker 3: And there was an actual case a couple of years
[8:34] Speaker 3: before of a young woman who disappeared again from a
[8:37] Speaker 3: well-heeled family. It turns out that she like ran away
[8:41] Speaker 3: from home to be a waitress. And after a couple
[8:43] Speaker 3: of days was like waitressing stinks.
[8:46] Speaker 2: She said nuts to that.
[8:47] Speaker 3: I want to go back to my life as a socialite.
[8:50] Speaker 3: But the parents had like put that out in the
[8:52] Speaker 3: public eye and then a lot of embarrassment was served up.
[8:55] Speaker 3: So this, you know, they had reason to kind of,
[8:58] Speaker 3: I guess, try and keep this under wraps initially.
[9:00] Speaker 1: At least.
[9:01] Speaker 2: One of the other explanations I saw that's a little
[9:03] Speaker 2: more heartening is that if this got out and it
[9:07] Speaker 2: did turn into a scandal, if, say, Dorothy was just
[9:11] Speaker 2: off doing whatever, she might become so mortified at all
[9:15] Speaker 2: of the negative attention that that she might not want
[9:18] Speaker 2: to come back to her old life because she would
[9:20] Speaker 2: have to face such crazy social repercussions that she just
[9:23] Speaker 2: might stay away. So there were a few reasons to
[9:27] Speaker 2: kind of be cagey about it. And one of the
[9:30] Speaker 2: first cagey things they did was after calling her friends
[9:33] Speaker 2: and none of them had seen her, one of her
[9:35] Speaker 2: friends called back just to check on her around midnight.
[9:39] Speaker 2: And her mom told the friend, oh, she got back home.
[9:42] Speaker 2: She's fine. She has a headache and went straight to bed.
[9:45] Speaker 2: And just completely lie. That's just not the case. But
[9:49] Speaker 2: that was that was something that I think a lot
[9:51] Speaker 2: of people in retrospect to are like, did that family
[9:54] Speaker 2: know something? For my two cents, the family did not
[9:56] Speaker 2: know anything. And they were as in the in the
[10:00] Speaker 2: dark as anybody else about what happened to her.
[10:03] Speaker 3: So they decided to get someone on the case, not
[10:06] Speaker 3: the police yet, but they called an attorney, a friend
[10:09] Speaker 3: of theirs named John Keith and said, hey, this is
[10:13] Speaker 3: what's going on.
[10:14] Speaker 1: Like, what can you do to help us?
[10:16] Speaker 3: I guess he had, you know, I guess he seemed
[10:18] Speaker 3: like a person that they thought could help at the time.
[10:22] Speaker 3: He came over, started doing a little, I guess, lawyer
[10:26] Speaker 3: like investigation and found some letters in her room, saw
[10:31] Speaker 3: that some papers had been burned in the fireplace that
[10:33] Speaker 3: the family all thought was like, hey, this is that
[10:36] Speaker 3: story that got rejected for McClure's that she is getting
[10:39] Speaker 3: rid of.
[10:41] Speaker 1: Again, a bit of a leap.
[10:42] Speaker 3: But he helped him out, you know, like, let's call
[10:45] Speaker 3: the morgue, let's call the hospitals, let's call some jails.
[10:48] Speaker 3: And eventually he was like, listen, get a Pinkerton detective
[10:52] Speaker 3: on this thing because they can be quite discreet as well.
[10:56] Speaker 3: And so they did that and then started reaching out to,
[10:59] Speaker 3: I think, through the Pinkerton guy to other cities nearby,
[11:02] Speaker 3: like basically anyone that she had ever known. that lived
[11:05] Speaker 3: in another town they were trying to get in touch
[11:07] Speaker 3: with to see if they knew anything at all.
[11:09] Speaker 2: Yeah. And to a person, they were like, I haven't
[11:12] Speaker 2: seen her, you know. And then finally, 10 days after
[11:15] Speaker 2: she went missing, they went to the cops. They went
[11:18] Speaker 2: straight to the deputy police commissioner, William J. Flynn. And Flynn,
[11:22] Speaker 2: knowing that he was dealing with a really affluent, influential
[11:25] Speaker 2: New York family, he did his best and he was
[11:28] Speaker 2: successful at keeping this under wraps, again, to avoid scandal.
[11:33] Speaker 2: Yet he issued what is called a silent alarm, which
[11:36] Speaker 2: is basically like you're letting the cops know, but also
[11:39] Speaker 2: do not tell the press about this kind of thing.
[11:42] Speaker 2: So the cops started looking for from December 22nd on.
[11:46] Speaker 2: And I think for a full month, Flynn and the
[11:51] Speaker 2: cops kept it under wraps and kept it out of
[11:54] Speaker 2: the public eye. that Dorothy was missing and I didn't
[11:58] Speaker 2: see anywhere. Like how did they explain her absence to
[12:00] Speaker 2: like friends or like, I think Marjorie's debutante ball was
[12:03] Speaker 2: like five days after she was missing. I'm sure they,
[12:06] Speaker 2: they kept that, you know, they had no reason publicly to,
[12:10] Speaker 2: to postpone that. So how did they explain Dorothy's absence?
[12:13] Speaker 2: I was just curious about that. I couldn't find it anywhere. Yeah.
[12:17] Speaker 1: Uh, who knows?
[12:18] Speaker 3: Um, that 10 days is certainly, uh, Probably a dumb
[12:22] Speaker 3: thing to do if you're trying to find your daughter.
[12:24] Speaker 2: For sure.
[12:25] Speaker 1: Successfully. But yeah, that's what they did.
[12:28] Speaker 3: They waited 10 days for the cops and then even
[12:30] Speaker 3: longer to eventually go public. On January 25th, the cops
[12:33] Speaker 3: were like, hey, listen, you got to get the public's
[12:36] Speaker 3: help here. And they held a press conference. They let
[12:40] Speaker 3: everyone know what happened, offered a thousand dollar reward. And
[12:44] Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the New York Times has picked
[12:46] Speaker 3: up the story under the heading Niece of Peckham. strangely missing,
[12:51] Speaker 3: which was the Supreme Court justice. So, you know, initially
[12:54] Speaker 3: tying her to, you know, a Supreme Court justice, obviously
[12:59] Speaker 3: just a grabby headline, I think, probably.
[13:02] Speaker 2: Sure.
[13:03] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[13:03] Speaker 2: I guess he was well known enough that you could
[13:05] Speaker 2: even say him by his call him by his last name. Yeah.
[13:09] Speaker 2: The Pexter, I think, is what most people call them.
[13:13] Speaker 1: Should we take a break?
[13:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. All right.
[13:16] Speaker 1: We'll take a break. It's out in the news and
[13:18] Speaker 1: in the public, and we'll come back right after this.
[13:41] Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, so we're back and Dorothy's missing. This is
[13:44] Speaker 2: pretty early in the investigation. January 25th is where we reached.
[13:49] Speaker 2: And initially, the police were reported to basically think that
[13:53] Speaker 2: Dorothy just ran off. that she went off to get married.
[13:57] Speaker 2: One of the clues that actually panned out to nothing
[14:01] Speaker 2: was a sheath of brochures for ocean liners, which suggested
[14:06] Speaker 2: strongly that she had planned or intended to run off
[14:11] Speaker 2: and probably run off with the bow. That's why most
[14:13] Speaker 2: people ran off at the time. And the family was like,
[14:18] Speaker 2: we don't believe that at all. We just absolutely don't
[14:20] Speaker 2: think that. So there was this constant disagreement with The
[14:24] Speaker 2: cops publicly saying we think she's alive and just ran
[14:27] Speaker 2: off in the family saying she just would not do
[14:29] Speaker 2: that to us. We think she's dead, actually.
[14:32] Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, the rumor mill is going to spread.
[14:34] Speaker 1: The tabloids are going to pick it up.
[14:36] Speaker 3: So, of course, they were suggesting everything from eloping to
[14:42] Speaker 3: dying by suicide to being like the family knows that
[14:46] Speaker 3: there was a crime like that she was murdered or
[14:48] Speaker 3: kidnapped or something. And they're just trying to keep it
[14:51] Speaker 3: quiet because they're, you know, rich and powerful family. And obviously,
[14:55] Speaker 3: false reportings of sightings come in, fake ransom letters start
[15:00] Speaker 3: coming in. And this is all the reason why the
[15:02] Speaker 3: family didn't want this to go public, because that's the
[15:04] Speaker 3: kind of thing that comes along with it. But finally,
[15:09] Speaker 3: the last week of January, reporters basically were hearing from
[15:14] Speaker 3: people involved in the case that it was going to
[15:17] Speaker 3: be solved and that she was seen in the city recently.
[15:20] Speaker 3: So this happened a couple of times where they were
[15:24] Speaker 3: like a report came out that like, yeah, we, we
[15:26] Speaker 3: basically know where she is. She's coming home and it
[15:28] Speaker 3: never amounted to anything.
[15:30] Speaker 2: No, no, for sure. And very interestingly, if you read
[15:34] Speaker 2: some of the headlines, um, covering Savannah Guthrie's mother's disappearance,
[15:39] Speaker 2: there's a lot of like someone spotted her. They think
[15:42] Speaker 2: she's coming home. Like that's, it seems to be pretty
[15:44] Speaker 2: standard that the press will just print whatever somebody says,
[15:48] Speaker 2: you know? So, um, the, the investigation, um, not just
[15:53] Speaker 2: for her whereabouts, but into her background, looking for any
[15:56] Speaker 2: kind of clue, like those ocean liner brochures, um, to
[16:00] Speaker 2: figure out where she went, what happened to her. It
[16:03] Speaker 2: turned up just zip, right? Like no friend came forward
[16:07] Speaker 2: and said, Hey, she actually had a secret life. She
[16:09] Speaker 2: was seeing this guy no one knows about, um, or
[16:12] Speaker 2: bank accounts that her family didn't know about. None of
[16:15] Speaker 2: those turned up. Um, She was like a she seems
[16:19] Speaker 2: to have been the person that she appeared to be
[16:22] Speaker 2: on the surface. She wasn't hiding a secret life or
[16:25] Speaker 2: anything like that. She was very loyal to her family.
[16:28] Speaker 2: She listened to what her father told her to do.
[16:31] Speaker 2: And like she wasn't troubled. She didn't have a lot
[16:35] Speaker 2: of stuff on her mind. The worst thing that had
[16:37] Speaker 2: happened to her. And it does seem to have been
[16:39] Speaker 2: significant was being rejected by McClure's. And I think also
[16:44] Speaker 2: her family making fun of her probably weighed on her
[16:46] Speaker 2: more than. then she led on, but nothing was coming up.
[16:50] Speaker 2: And it's not like those ocean liners, like her family's like, no,
[16:52] Speaker 2: she didn't run off. And that's where that lead went.
[16:55] Speaker 2: They got in touch with every ocean liner going to
[16:57] Speaker 2: Europe at the time to see if anyone on board
[17:00] Speaker 2: matched her description or was in their register under her name.
[17:05] Speaker 2: And again, nada, nothing turned up. So every lead that
[17:08] Speaker 2: they had just completely went nowhere.
[17:10] Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, poor Francis, the father is, uh,
[17:15] Speaker 3: Like he's telling reporters out loud that he he thinks
[17:18] Speaker 3: that she's dead. The police, you know, or at least
[17:23] Speaker 3: the police and the public are like, there's no body.
[17:26] Speaker 3: So she's probably still out there somewhere. But the family
[17:28] Speaker 3: was like, no, she probably was just disposed of in
[17:31] Speaker 3: a way where they haven't found this body. In February,
[17:35] Speaker 3: I think February 7th, the Times reported that police in
[17:40] Speaker 3: New York and Philly weren't even working on the case anymore.
[17:44] Speaker 3: And that, you know, basically like, hey, the family knows
[17:47] Speaker 3: where she is. Again, she's about to return any day now.
[17:51] Speaker 3: And in that story from The Times, it was I
[17:55] Speaker 3: think that they said the previous day that Francis, the father,
[18:00] Speaker 3: had gotten a supposedly at least gotten a postcard that said,
[18:04] Speaker 3: I am safe in her handwriting. But the family basically
[18:08] Speaker 3: was like, no, this is a joke. Somebody saw her
[18:10] Speaker 3: handwriting there. and a letter that they had published in
[18:13] Speaker 3: the newspaper. And again, it's just somebody messing around with us.
[18:16] Speaker 2: Yeah. Which is pretty cruel.
[18:18] Speaker 1: Of course.
[18:19] Speaker 2: Imagine also being the kind of person who's like, here's
[18:24] Speaker 2: an heiress disappearing and thinking, well, now's my chance. I'm
[18:27] Speaker 2: going to send a fake ransom letter and hope for
[18:29] Speaker 2: the best.
[18:30] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[18:30] Speaker 2: If you're sending fake ransom letters to people whose loved
[18:34] Speaker 2: one has disappeared, you should stop and reevaluate your life,
[18:37] Speaker 2: I think is a good rule of thumb.
[18:39] Speaker 1: Yeah. Hey, we usually don't like to tell people what
[18:41] Speaker 1: to do. Oh, yeah.
[18:42] Speaker 2: I don't mean to get preachy.
[18:44] Speaker 1: I can get behind that.
[18:45] Speaker 2: Okay. So something that you had said was that it's
[18:48] Speaker 2: kind of up in the air whether her mother Mary's
[18:52] Speaker 2: health was delicate, I guess. Yeah. And her father told
[18:58] Speaker 2: the press, like, her mom's off limits. She's in a
[19:02] Speaker 2: rest home in New Jersey. She's about to have a
[19:06] Speaker 2: nervous breakdown. Just leave her alone. And the press left
[19:09] Speaker 2: her alone. They didn't search for her. But she turned
[19:12] Speaker 2: up anyway, not in New Jersey. She turned up in Italy.
[19:16] Speaker 2: And the reason she was in Italy, as we'll see,
[19:19] Speaker 2: is because she and her son, John, went looking for
[19:22] Speaker 2: a man named George S. Griscom Jr., a.k.a. Junior, because
[19:29] Speaker 2: the family already knew. But it turned out that as
[19:31] Speaker 2: a big reveal to the public, she had a secret
[19:34] Speaker 2: romance with this guy who was 15 years older than her.
[19:37] Speaker 3: Yeah, this kind of came about because there was a
[19:40] Speaker 3: reporter early on interviewing the father and said like, hey,
[19:46] Speaker 3: did she run off because you don't let her date?
[19:48] Speaker 1: Because that's a thing.
[19:50] Speaker 3: And the dad said, I would have been glad to
[19:53] Speaker 3: see her associate with more young men than she did,
[19:55] Speaker 3: especially some young men of brains and position, one whose
[19:58] Speaker 3: profession or business would keep them occupied. I don't approve
[20:01] Speaker 3: of young men who have nothing to do. And the
[20:03] Speaker 3: reporter was like, well, that's a really Weirdly specific thing
[20:07] Speaker 3: to say. And so the reporters tracked down this information
[20:12] Speaker 3: about Junior, who how old was she?
[20:15] Speaker 1: Twenty five. So this made him 40 years old.
[20:19] Speaker 3: He went to Harvard, which is like, that's great from
[20:22] Speaker 3: a wealthy family.
[20:23] Speaker 1: That's great.
[20:24] Speaker 3: But he was 40 years old and unemployed and living
[20:27] Speaker 3: with his parents still had been engaged to another heiress
[20:30] Speaker 3: that broke. She had broken off the engagement the night
[20:33] Speaker 3: before the wedding. Never a good sign. He had proposed
[20:37] Speaker 3: to Dorothy already. But Francis, the dad, was like, no,
[20:40] Speaker 3: you're not marrying my daughter.
[20:42] Speaker 1: Sure.
[20:43] Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden there's this secret romance
[20:46] Speaker 3: exposed where they learn that she had a little illicit
[20:50] Speaker 3: fling with him in Cambridge. She was like, I'm going
[20:52] Speaker 3: to go visit a college friend down there. But what
[20:55] Speaker 3: really happened was she went down there to have a
[20:57] Speaker 3: little fling with Junior. And like it looks like pawned
[21:01] Speaker 3: some jewelry in order to finance this thing. Yeah.
[21:03] Speaker 2: Five hundred dollars in 19. 10 money for $ 60. And
[21:09] Speaker 2: a lot of people are like, good, there you go.
[21:11] Speaker 2: She ran off to Boston with the guy. There's more
[21:15] Speaker 2: nuance to it that I think also shows Dorothy's personality.
[21:19] Speaker 2: Number one, they didn't stay at the same hotel. She
[21:22] Speaker 2: registered at the Lenox while George stayed at the Essex.
[21:25] Speaker 2: So even during this rendezvous, she still had propriety, I guess.
[21:31] Speaker 2: And then second, she registered at the Lenox under her name,
[21:36] Speaker 2: no alias. At the time you would put your address down,
[21:38] Speaker 2: she put her actual address in New York. So like
[21:42] Speaker 2: she wasn't, she didn't show any signs of being this
[21:45] Speaker 2: person who could like keep a secret life or something
[21:48] Speaker 2: like that. The one time she had the chance to
[21:52] Speaker 2: like perform in secret, she didn't. She just was herself. Yeah.
[21:57] Speaker 3: See, I read that more as not, she's trying to
[21:59] Speaker 3: be proper, but that she wanted to have two different
[22:03] Speaker 3: hotels to cover her tracks.
[22:06] Speaker 2: But why would she register in her real name then?
[22:09] Speaker 1: Because she went down there to see a friend. Okay.
[22:12] Speaker 3: Like there was nothing secret about that. She has her story. Like, yeah,
[22:15] Speaker 3: I went and stayed at the Lenox and saw my friend.
[22:17] Speaker 3: And no one at that hotel will say you saw
[22:19] Speaker 3: me with some dude because.
[22:22] Speaker 1: That happened at the other hotel.
[22:23] Speaker 2: Okay.
[22:24] Speaker 1: All right.
[22:24] Speaker 2: Fair enough.
[22:25] Speaker 1: Under his name. That's at least the way I read it.
[22:28] Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine, Chuck. We can all
[22:31] Speaker 2: have different opinions.
[22:33] Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
[22:35] Speaker 2: So let's see. We have established that Junior was a planetismal.
[22:40] Speaker 2: He never formed a full planet. And the reason that
[22:43] Speaker 2: he was in Italy was because he was on vacation
[22:46] Speaker 2: with his parents, his elderly parents. I think they were
[22:48] Speaker 2: probably in their 60s at the time, which was super
[22:51] Speaker 2: old in 1910. And George Griscombe, when he turned up,
[22:56] Speaker 2: when he became like a I guess a person, a
[22:59] Speaker 2: part of this whole disappearance. He started like, he kind
[23:05] Speaker 2: of added a whole new dynamic. The family did not
[23:08] Speaker 2: like him at all. And in fact, when Mary and
[23:12] Speaker 2: John confronted him in Italy, John beat him up. He
[23:16] Speaker 2: knocked him down. He reached into his coat pocket and
[23:19] Speaker 2: took some letters that Dorothy had mailed to him. Like
[23:24] Speaker 2: they didn't like George Griscombe at all, but he, If
[23:27] Speaker 2: you read some of the stuff that George Griscom did,
[23:30] Speaker 2: he really seems to have been genuinely concerned that Dorothy
[23:34] Speaker 2: was missing so much so that he came home early
[23:37] Speaker 2: to kind of try to help aid in the search
[23:40] Speaker 2: for her, despite her family saying, we don't want your help.
[23:43] Speaker 2: Stay away.
[23:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
[23:47] Speaker 3: Jumping back, though, on the Monday after Thanksgiving, they learned
[23:51] Speaker 3: that she had gone to the post office, that P.O.
[23:53] Speaker 3: box that she had set up in secret and gotten
[23:56] Speaker 3: a bunch of letters that were apparently had come from overseas.
[24:00] Speaker 3: And everyone basically presumes that they were from Griscom while
[24:03] Speaker 3: he was over there in Europe. And there was a
[24:06] Speaker 3: letter that he shared publicly later on where she wrote
[24:09] Speaker 3: to him talking about, you know, how much it hurt
[24:13] Speaker 3: her to have that story rejected. And she said, failure
[24:16] Speaker 3: stares me in the face. All I see ahead is
[24:18] Speaker 3: a long road with no turning. And then this weird line,
[24:22] Speaker 3: she said, mother will always think an accident has happened. Yeah.
[24:26] Speaker 2: And I didn't see anywhere that Griscom tried to explain
[24:29] Speaker 2: that when he revealed that letter to the press.
[24:33] Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what that means.
[24:35] Speaker 2: I don't think anybody knows what she meant specifically. Yeah.
[24:38] Speaker 2: It's weird. And it is very chilling. It definitely supports
[24:42] Speaker 2: the suicide theory for sure. Yeah. So should we take
[24:46] Speaker 2: our second break and come back and talk a little
[24:48] Speaker 2: more about stuff they turned up on Dorothy?
[24:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do.
[24:54] Speaker 2: It.
[24:56] Speaker 1: All right, so....
[25:14] Speaker 3: When we left you, I think Griscom had just come
[25:17] Speaker 3: back from Italy. This is February 9th. He comes back
[25:21] Speaker 3: and the reporters obviously are all over him. And he
[25:24] Speaker 3: was like, hey, listen, I'm here to help find her. Like,
[25:27] Speaker 3: you know, I loved her. Like, I want to find her.
[25:30] Speaker 3: And he changed his story a bit here and there, though,
[25:34] Speaker 3: which is a little fishy. Sometimes his story was that
[25:37] Speaker 3: they were engaged. Sometimes his story was that they were
[25:41] Speaker 3: just really good friends. He said at one point that
[25:44] Speaker 3: he said, hey, there's one at least one family member
[25:47] Speaker 3: that knows where she is and she's going to be
[25:49] Speaker 3: back soon and we're going to get married when she
[25:51] Speaker 3: gets back. So another time where someone publicly said like, yeah,
[25:55] Speaker 3: she's she's we know she's coming back.
[25:58] Speaker 2: Yeah. And one of the other things. So, like I said,
[26:00] Speaker 2: he added some new like component to the whole thing.
[26:03] Speaker 2: He was a foil to the family in a lot
[26:05] Speaker 2: of ways, because when John beat him up and took
[26:08] Speaker 2: those letters in Italy, the police were like, hey, can
[26:11] Speaker 2: we see those letters and see if there's any clues
[26:13] Speaker 2: in them? And John said they've already been destroyed. There's
[26:16] Speaker 2: nothing of consequence in there. But her family was also
[26:19] Speaker 2: very much convinced that she was dead. So it suggests
[26:22] Speaker 2: that there was something in the letters that satisfied the
[26:25] Speaker 2: family of her fate. But Griscom had the same letters, too.
[26:29] Speaker 2: He knew of that same content and he wasn't satisfied
[26:32] Speaker 2: that she was dead. So he's like him being there,
[26:36] Speaker 2: like I think really helps make this case the way
[26:40] Speaker 2: it is, that it's just so baffling because he he
[26:45] Speaker 2: he acts as an answer, an antidote to a lot
[26:47] Speaker 2: of the assumptions you can make when just looking at
[26:50] Speaker 2: the family's actions.
[26:52] Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the press is asking
[26:54] Speaker 3: him about these letters. They were like, hey, what about
[26:57] Speaker 3: this one letter that she wrote where she said she
[27:00] Speaker 3: was going to, quote, do something that may be cowardly?
[27:04] Speaker 3: And he didn't even answer them and said, like, I
[27:07] Speaker 3: promised her I wouldn't talk about this kind of thing
[27:11] Speaker 3: when she wrote me this stuff. He said, I had
[27:13] Speaker 3: a long talk with her mom in Europe. I agreed
[27:15] Speaker 3: to do certain things to help you guys. He dodged
[27:18] Speaker 3: questions about John beating him up. And then started running
[27:22] Speaker 3: like his own personal ads in the paper, like trying
[27:25] Speaker 3: to find her.
[27:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is at least the third parallel investigation
[27:30] Speaker 2: into her disappearance that Griscom has now undertaken. Although I
[27:34] Speaker 2: get the impression that his was a little slapdash compared
[27:36] Speaker 2: to the others.
[27:38] Speaker 1: Yeah. Less investigation, maybe more just public show. I don't know.
[27:41] Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. I hadn't gotten a
[27:44] Speaker 2: good read on him. I did believe he was genuinely concerned.
[27:48] Speaker 2: But yes, he seemed to have been not not roundly
[27:50] Speaker 2: liked by everybody.
[27:52] Speaker 1: I mean, he had no job. What else has he
[27:54] Speaker 1: got to do?
[27:55] Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. So this was there was a worldwide search
[27:59] Speaker 2: for her. I saw that every every. city and town
[28:03] Speaker 2: of consequence, uh, their police station got, um, you know, uh,
[28:08] Speaker 2: an alert of beyond the lookout with photos and descriptions
[28:10] Speaker 2: and all that stuff. Um, it was reported around the world.
[28:14] Speaker 2: I found a paper in Tasmania that, um, had a
[28:17] Speaker 2: long story describing the disappearance the following July. Like, like
[28:22] Speaker 2: it was everywhere for, for a few years as a
[28:25] Speaker 2: matter of fact, but as with everything, Interest waned. Interest
[28:29] Speaker 2: in new stuff kind of came along. But yet there's
[28:32] Speaker 2: still plenty of reporting that pops up over the years.
[28:36] Speaker 2: If you go on to newspapers.com, shout out newspapers.com for
[28:40] Speaker 2: contemporary-aneous articles.
[28:43] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[28:45] Speaker 2: Like you can find them throughout. the decades, just basically
[28:49] Speaker 2: like what happened. And most of the time it doesn't
[28:52] Speaker 2: add anything new, but it's just such a baffling case
[28:55] Speaker 2: that somebody could say, oh, I haven't read about, or
[28:58] Speaker 2: I haven't written about Dorothy Arnold in a while. I'll
[29:00] Speaker 2: do that for my column this week. Yeah.
[29:03] Speaker 3: So here are some of those stories right now. Four
[29:06] Speaker 3: years later in 1914, there was a story where police
[29:10] Speaker 3: raided a hospital in Pittsburgh, in a suburb of Pittsburgh
[29:14] Speaker 3: that You know, abortion was illegal. And so they it
[29:17] Speaker 3: was one of those hospitals that offered kind of secret abortions.
[29:21] Speaker 3: They were there to arrest people. They arrested two doctors
[29:23] Speaker 3: and a nurse. And one of the doctors implied that
[29:27] Speaker 3: Dorothy had died there, basically went in to get a
[29:30] Speaker 3: got pregnant from Griscom is the assumption, went there to
[29:35] Speaker 3: get an abortion, died there during the process and was
[29:38] Speaker 3: cremated in the cellar. And some people noted that like
[29:41] Speaker 3: Griscom could have traveled there. It wasn't too far away.
[29:45] Speaker 3: And it could, you know, people died during those procedures,
[29:49] Speaker 3: but nothing ever came from that.
[29:51] Speaker 2: No, but that is really random for one of the
[29:54] Speaker 2: doctors to pipe up and say that. And it is
[29:56] Speaker 2: clear that some women did die during procedures and were
[29:59] Speaker 2: cremated in the basement. I mean, that's a pretty likely possibility, right?
[30:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, that could have been what happened.
[30:09] Speaker 2: Yeah. Her family, of course, was like, nope, that absolutely
[30:11] Speaker 2: didn't happen. So did George Griscom. A couple of years
[30:15] Speaker 2: after that, there was a prisoner in Rhode Island State
[30:18] Speaker 2: Prison who who said that years back he had been
[30:22] Speaker 2: paid $ 250 to help dispose of a body of a woman.
[30:25] Speaker 2: And he said that woman was 100% Dorothy Arnold. And
[30:30] Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, you can find her in
[30:31] Speaker 2: the cellar of this house in West Point, New York.
[30:36] Speaker 2: And the cops went and dug up the cellar of
[30:38] Speaker 2: that house in West Point, New York, and not only
[30:41] Speaker 2: didn't find her, they found nothing. So the guy was
[30:43] Speaker 2: just bored, I guess. So that went absolutely nowhere.
[30:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, this one is really, really weird to me. In 1921,
[30:53] Speaker 3: during like a public interview, I guess, the head of
[30:57] Speaker 3: New York Police Department's Bureau of Missing Persons was a
[31:00] Speaker 3: guy named Captain J.H.
[31:02] Speaker 1: Ayers.
[31:03] Speaker 3: He said the police department knew what happened to her
[31:06] Speaker 3: a few months earlier. They figured it out basically and
[31:09] Speaker 3: solved it and that they probably should not have mentioned
[31:11] Speaker 3: the case as it was strictly confidential in the department.
[31:15] Speaker 3: He wouldn't say whether she was alive or dead. But
[31:17] Speaker 3: she was no longer a missing person. And the next
[31:19] Speaker 3: day he was like, oh, yeah, you know what? I
[31:21] Speaker 3: was misquoted or I misspoke or whatever. And like, I
[31:25] Speaker 3: guess nothing ever came from that either, which is just nuts.
[31:27] Speaker 2: It is like that one's very weird. But again, nothing
[31:32] Speaker 2: did come of it. Like you said, like even after
[31:35] Speaker 2: all these years, it just seems to have died right there.
[31:38] Speaker 2: And so those theories over the years, like you said,
[31:43] Speaker 2: basically amount to murder. Kidnapping, which eventually led to murder.
[31:49] Speaker 2: And the murder theory was that she probably if she
[31:54] Speaker 2: was murdered, it would have happened in Central Park in
[31:57] Speaker 2: some lonely stretch where she was. You remember, she said
[32:00] Speaker 2: she was about to walk home through Central Park and
[32:03] Speaker 2: they actually did have the reservoir dragged. And no surprise,
[32:06] Speaker 2: absolutely no evidence turned up from that.
[32:09] Speaker 1: Just a few other bodies.
[32:10] Speaker 2: I'm sure. I'm sure. But one of the things that
[32:14] Speaker 2: I thought was pretty interesting, one of the theories is
[32:16] Speaker 2: that she had amnesia. Yeah.
[32:18] Speaker 3: I mean, there certainly have been cases where someone bonks
[32:21] Speaker 3: their head and forgets who they are and starts a
[32:24] Speaker 3: new life like that has happened. But again, you know,
[32:28] Speaker 3: no evidence of this. This is people just kind of
[32:30] Speaker 3: throwing spaghetti at the wall at this point, I think.
[32:31] Speaker 1: Sure.
[32:33] Speaker 3: What about the woman in Kansas City, though? Because they
[32:35] Speaker 3: found an almost dead ringer for her, which was very strange.
[32:39] Speaker 2: It's nuts, isn't it? Yeah. I turned this up, I think,
[32:42] Speaker 2: in a 1935 article from San Antonio. But there is
[32:46] Speaker 2: a woman named Mrs. Anna Miller who is located in
[32:50] Speaker 2: Kansas City. Enough reports of Dorothy Arnold sightings were coming
[32:55] Speaker 2: out of Kansas City in the 30s that the New
[32:58] Speaker 2: York Police Department actually traveled there to figure out what
[33:01] Speaker 2: the heck was going on. And they found Anna Miller,
[33:03] Speaker 2: who was said to be the wife of a movie
[33:06] Speaker 2: projector operator. And, yes, she was a dead bringer for
[33:11] Speaker 2: Dorothy Arnold. She had the same height, weight, same age,
[33:14] Speaker 2: same facial characteristics. She had the same birthmark, which is
[33:18] Speaker 2: really strange because it's a mole on her right leg
[33:22] Speaker 2: three inches above the knee. That's quite a coincidence. And
[33:25] Speaker 2: the coincidences kept building up. She told investigators, I actually
[33:30] Speaker 2: used to live in New York. And they said, when?
[33:32] Speaker 2: She said, well, I moved on December 12th, 1910, which
[33:35] Speaker 2: is the day Dorothy Arnold went missing. She also had
[33:39] Speaker 2: a Fifth Avenue fur and a Fifth Avenue muffler, which
[33:42] Speaker 2: is kind of surprising for the wife of a movie
[33:45] Speaker 2: projector operator in Kansas City. But somehow, some way, the
[33:50] Speaker 2: police were satisfied that she was not actually Dorothy Arnold.
[33:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is one of those frustrating things where
[33:56] Speaker 3: it's so long ago, there's no way to find any
[34:00] Speaker 3: of these people or talk to them because the amnesia
[34:04] Speaker 3: theory actually could fit with that. That she bonked her
[34:07] Speaker 3: head on the way home, slipped or something, and woke up,
[34:12] Speaker 3: didn't know who she was, wandered.
[34:14] Speaker 1: Off to Kansas City.
[34:15] Speaker 2: Sure, as you do.
[34:17] Speaker 1: With her stuff, because, I don't know, birthmarks, that's pretty specific.
[34:21] Speaker 2: It is. The thing is, is They searched hospitals. They
[34:26] Speaker 2: searched the morgue. One of the reasons why it's not
[34:29] Speaker 2: probable that she was misidentified or identified as Jane Doe
[34:34] Speaker 2: is because not only did they search the morgue, people
[34:36] Speaker 2: who knew what she looked like, coroners trained to spot,
[34:42] Speaker 2: you know, like this person seems like a well-to-do person.
[34:44] Speaker 2: It's weird that they were found missing. naked and dead.
[34:47] Speaker 2: I'm going to look a little further into that. And
[34:50] Speaker 2: they checked all the hospitals and there weren't any reports
[34:53] Speaker 2: of any woman around that time showing up with amnesia.
[34:56] Speaker 2: So I don't know. The Anna Miller thing is quite weird.
[34:59] Speaker 2: I agree with you.
[35:02] Speaker 1: I mean, I'm going to go ahead and say it.
[35:04] Speaker 1: I bet you that was probably her.
[35:05] Speaker 2: Isn't that, that's so amazing though. If that's, And like
[35:09] Speaker 2: she convinced them, I'm not Dorothy Arnold. If she actually
[35:12] Speaker 2: did have amnesia and did not believe she was Dorothy Arnold,
[35:15] Speaker 2: that's just even more amazing.
[35:17] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[35:17] Speaker 3: I mean, if that is the case, I guess the
[35:19] Speaker 3: bright side is she lived a life in Kansas City
[35:24] Speaker 3: that was hopefully satisfying to her, being married to a projectionist.
[35:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And she got to keep her fur
[35:31] Speaker 2: in her muffler, too, which is nice.
[35:34] Speaker 3: Well, John Keith, the attorney, basically believes that she took
[35:37] Speaker 3: her own life because she was upset about, you know,
[35:42] Speaker 3: not being able to live her life as a bohemian
[35:44] Speaker 3: writer in the Greenwich Village. But then everyone else, all
[35:48] Speaker 3: of her friends were like, no, man, she did like
[35:50] Speaker 3: she was always in pretty good spirits. Like there was
[35:52] Speaker 3: no indication of anything like that going on. There's a
[35:56] Speaker 3: historian named Sylvia Petim who has written about the case
[36:00] Speaker 3: a lot, and she was leaning toward the– botched abortion
[36:05] Speaker 3: procedure where she was died and cremated initially. But I
[36:10] Speaker 3: think later on, she just thinks like now she I
[36:14] Speaker 3: think she disappeared herself because she wanted to get out
[36:17] Speaker 3: of that, like out from under the thumb of that family.
[36:20] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[36:20] Speaker 2: And I mean, if she wanted to go live the
[36:23] Speaker 2: bohemian life of a artist, a writer, she might not
[36:27] Speaker 2: have needed all that much money to get started. You know?
[36:30] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[36:31] Speaker 1: Kansas City. It's a good place to do it. Right.
[36:34] Speaker 2: One thing I saw that kind of contradicts that, you know,
[36:37] Speaker 2: the idea that she was in good spirits, so it
[36:39] Speaker 2: couldn't have been suicide, is that in a lot of cases,
[36:43] Speaker 2: I don't know if it's typical, people who have decided
[36:46] Speaker 2: to die by suicide the day before they do it
[36:48] Speaker 2: or the day of, they're actually in good spirits.
[36:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
[36:51] Speaker 2: They've decided, they've resolved, and now there's some sort of
[36:55] Speaker 2: hope of getting out of the situation that they're in.
[36:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
[37:00] Speaker 3: As far as her family's concerned, her dad, spent about
[37:03] Speaker 3: a dozen years and about a million bucks in 1920s
[37:07] Speaker 3: dollars trying to find her. Mary Arnold died six years
[37:12] Speaker 3: after she disappeared. And when she died, the New York
[37:16] Speaker 3: Times identified her as Dorothy Arnold's mother. So she was
[37:19] Speaker 3: kind of forever tagged with that. And, you know, just
[37:23] Speaker 3: like with all these cases over the years, there have
[37:26] Speaker 3: been like fake letters of people claiming to be her
[37:28] Speaker 3: or perhaps sightings of her. I think as late as
[37:32] Speaker 3: even 1935, 25 years later, police said, like, people are
[37:37] Speaker 3: still calling in tips about this case.
[37:39] Speaker 2: For sure. It gets even weirder. Dorothy's younger sister, remember
[37:44] Speaker 2: the debutante Marjorie? She had a daughter named Rebecca, and
[37:48] Speaker 2: Rebecca became the heir to Dorothy's papers and letters. And
[37:53] Speaker 2: Rebecca destroyed them. I'm suspecting that she burned them. And
[37:57] Speaker 2: so that even like the the. The descendants today of
[38:02] Speaker 2: the Arnold family have no idea what happened.
[38:05] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[38:06] Speaker 2: So if there was any evidence in those letters, like
[38:09] Speaker 2: Rebecca knew and she took it to her grave, it's
[38:12] Speaker 2: also just as likely that the letters are maybe a
[38:15] Speaker 2: little embarrassing or, you know.
[38:17] Speaker 1: Sure.
[38:19] Speaker 2: They contain stuff that she didn't want her aunt to
[38:22] Speaker 2: be remembered by or whatever. It's not necessarily that she
[38:26] Speaker 2: was covering up something, you know, scandalous.
[38:29] Speaker 3: Yeah, or it could have just been like she wants
[38:33] Speaker 3: people to stop asking her, and the easy way to
[38:35] Speaker 3: do that is to have nothing to offer.
[38:37] Speaker 2: She went, watch this, and just started tearing them up.
[38:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, SAD will clearly never be solved at this point.
[38:45] Speaker 2: I don't see how it could be.
[38:47] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[38:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, RIP, I mean, certainly by this point, Dorothy Arnold,
[38:53] Speaker 2: maybe Anna Miller, and we hope that whatever the outcome was,
[38:58] Speaker 2: It was either quick and painless or long and fulfilling.
[39:02] Speaker 2: How about that?
[39:03] Speaker 1: That's right.
[39:03] Speaker 3: And a less lazy podcaster would be intrigued enough to
[39:07] Speaker 3: do some more research on this Kansas City woman.
[39:10] Speaker 2: Yes.
[39:11] Speaker 1: But that's not me.
[39:13] Speaker 2: No, same. No, we've got to move on to the next, right?
[39:16] Speaker 1: That's right.
[39:18] Speaker 2: Well, if you want to go do some research on
[39:20] Speaker 2: Anna Miller or Dorothy Arnold or anything like that, there's
[39:24] Speaker 2: plenty out there on the Internet just waiting for you.
[39:27] Speaker 2: And in the meantime, we're going to go ahead and
[39:29] Speaker 2: do listeners. mail.
[39:33] Speaker 1: Kind of a funny correction. Hey guys, love the show.
[39:36] Speaker 3: And I love it when my useless knowledge can help
[39:38] Speaker 3: one of my favorite podcasts. On the Social Identity Theory show,
[39:41] Speaker 3: you guys referenced the classic movie, Can't Buy Me Love. However,
[39:45] Speaker 3: when Josh referenced the quote, I'm pretty sure that quote
[39:47] Speaker 3: situation was from another Patrick Dempsey movie, the classic Loverboy.
[39:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely was.
[39:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't remember you saying that because I have
[39:56] Speaker 3: not seen Loverboy, so I would not have known is
[39:58] Speaker 3: probably why I didn't say anything.
[40:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I didn't say it was Loverboy. I was mistaken,
[40:03] Speaker 2: I guess. It's weird. It feels weird.
[40:05] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[40:07] Speaker 3: Can't Buy Me Love is the example of social identity
[40:09] Speaker 3: theory of the lawnmower boy pays for popularity with the
[40:13] Speaker 3: cheerleader and the jocks.
[40:15] Speaker 1: Who could beat a night of cards, chips, dips, and dorks.
[40:17] Speaker 1: It's a quote from the movie.
[40:19] Speaker 3: Lover Boy is the story of the poor college boy
[40:21] Speaker 3: getting extra cash for pizza delivery extras. I remember that movie,
[40:25] Speaker 3: but I didn't see it.
[40:27] Speaker 1: Did you see it?
[40:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah.
[40:28] Speaker 1: Oh, clearly.
[40:29] Speaker 2: I guess I had a Patrick Dempsey thing when I
[40:31] Speaker 2: was like 12.
[40:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, you were early on the McDreamy train.
[40:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, those were cute little movies for sure. I
[40:38] Speaker 2: don't know how they hold up, but I'm guessing they're
[40:41] Speaker 2: probably still pretty good.
[40:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, I Can't Buy Me Love is one of those
[40:44] Speaker 3: fun ones that I want to show Ruby at some
[40:46] Speaker 3: point until I remember that it was made in the 80s.
[40:49] Speaker 1: And so there's just nudity for no reason.
[40:54] Speaker 2: Oh, OK. All right.
[40:55] Speaker 3: Not that, you know, we're not nude shaming in our
[40:58] Speaker 3: house at all, but we're still not like showing her
[41:00] Speaker 3: movies with nude scenes yet.
[41:01] Speaker 2: You're not like elbowing her in the ribs like check
[41:03] Speaker 2: that out.
[41:04] Speaker 1: No, no, no.
[41:06] Speaker 2: So what are you waiting for? Like maybe 18 for Can't.
[41:09] Speaker 1: Buy Me Love?
[41:09] Speaker 2: I know.
[41:10] Speaker 1: I don't know. We'll see. I'll let everyone know.
[41:12] Speaker 2: How about this? I'll go back and watch it just
[41:14] Speaker 2: for fun, and I'll let you know if there's any
[41:16] Speaker 2: random nudity in it, because I don't remember that. Remember,
[41:18] Speaker 2: I was like 12 at the time, so I definitely
[41:21] Speaker 2: would have remembered that.
[41:22] Speaker 1: Oh, no. There was. I remember the exact scene.
[41:25] Speaker 2: Really?
[41:26] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[41:26] Speaker 1: It has a very.
[41:29] Speaker 3: Dumb, dumb line that Emily and I privately laugh at still.
[41:33] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah? That I'll tell you about off mic.
[41:35] Speaker 2: Okay. I can't wait to hear.
[41:37] Speaker 3: Wow.
[41:38] Speaker 2: I'm surprised at my 12-year-old self.
[41:41] Speaker 1: All right. Thanks, guys. Keep up the great work from
[41:43] Speaker 1: Alex Thompson.
[41:44] Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Alex. That was a great email. Appreciate
[41:46] Speaker 2: it big time. And if you want to be like
[41:48] Speaker 2: Alex and email us so that we can appreciate you
[41:51] Speaker 2: big time, send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
[41:58] Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
[42:01] Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[42:05] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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