Comb World In Vain for Arnold Girl

Dec. 1915

Relatives Give Up Hope as Five Years Pass Without Trace

Folks Wear Mourning

Disappeared Five Years Ago This Week

Following is the order of Dorothy Arnold's actions December 12, 1910, so far as known up to the time of her disappearance:
11:30 A. M. — Left her home at 108 East Seventy-ninth street, New York, telling her mother she intended to buy a new dress.
12:00 Noon. — Bought a box of candy at Fifth avenue and Fifty-ninth street.
2:00 P. M. — Bought a book at Brentano's and had it charged, altho she had between $20 and $30 in her purse when she left her home two hours and a half earlier.
2:45 P. M. — Met a girl friend at Fifth avenue, near Thirtieth street.
2:50 P. M. — ? ? ? ? ?

NEW YORK, Dec. 16. — Five years ago this week Miss Dorothy Arnold vanished so completely that no detective in the world has been able to discover a clew to her whereabouts or her fate.

"What happened to Dorothy Arnold?" is a question that has been asked in every house where newspapers printed in any language are read.

For answer such men as William J. Flynn, now head of the United States Secret Service; Sir E. R. Henry, chief of Scotland Yard; William J. Burns, George S. Dougherty, former deputy police commissioner in charge of the New York detectives; Joseph A. Faurot, present chief of detectives, and Lieut. Grant Williams, who as the director of the New York police department's bureau of missing persons, has investigated thousands of strange disappearances, give the reply that they are at a loss for a way to fathom the mystery.

If Dead, Where Is Body?

Dorothy Arnold was last seen, so far as is known to the police or other investigators, at Fifth avenue and Thirtieth street, on Monday, Dec. 12, 1910. The time was 3 o'clock in the afternoon or a few minutes earlier.

The aged father of the missing girl, who has spent many thousands of dollars to search every city in the world by wireless, cable, telegraph, telephone, mail and detectives, wears as a silent answer to the query of Dorothy's fate a wide mourning band on his hat, a mourning necktie and a suit of black. He is a wealthy importer of French and Russian perfumes.

"She is dead," he said to reporters this week.

"But where is her body?" is the question asked by trained investigators.

"Any morgue keeper in the entire country would at once take notice of a woman dressed in expensive lingerie or clothing," Lieutenant Williams says, in discussing the statistics of his bureau, which show that on the average one woman a year is left unidentified.

Description of Dorothy Arnold.

Dorothy Arnold on Dec. 12, 1910, when she went away from her home, was 26 years old. She was about 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed in the neighborhood of 140 pounds.

She was of striking appearance; her complexion was bright, her hair was dark brown and her eyes were grayish blue.

She wore a tailor-made blue serge suit and a black velvet hat trimmed with two silk roses.

The hat had inscribed in its lining the name of a fashionable milliner. Similarly, the name of the maker was embroidered on the tailor-made underwear which the young woman wore.

In her hand bag Miss Arnold carried about $20 or $30; yet she asked the clerk in Park & Tilford's Fifth avenue and Fifty-ninth street store to charge a pound of candy, and requested the cashier in Brentano's store to send her father the bill for a book — "An Engaged Girl's Sketches" — which she bought within a few hours after she was last seen by her mother.

Search Made All Over World.

The search for Dorothy Arnold has never been equaled for thoroughness. Here was the case of a mature young woman, highly educated, to a degree literary, and physically strong enough to balk any attempt at kidnaping. She was not in the habit of "slumming" or doing "settlement work," but, on the contrary, was more inclined to afternoon visits to such places as Sherry's restaurant and the Plaza tearoom. Her evenings were mostly spent in the company of her relatives or near friends. For almost six weeks following the disappearance of Dorothy the search was conducted along "confidential" lines. Her father, the descendant of a proud New England family, which traces its lineage back to the landing of the Pilgrims, loathed publicity. Her mother, a Canadian by birth and highly sensitive, equally abhorred the thought of letting the prying eyes of the public get a glimpse into the family circle.

The Man in Her Life.

There was a man in Dorothy Arnold's life. A few months preceding her disappearance the "affair" was such that it became a matter of family discussion. The first act after the young woman failed to respond to advertisements inserted in the personal columns of newspapers was to communicate by wireless with steamships bound for Europe. Then detectives were sent to Pittsburgh, Pa., to find out where George S. Griscom, a 44-year-old engineer, was staying at that time.

Griscom was in Florence, Italy. And there Mrs. Arnold hastened to confront him with the story of her daughter's disappearance. Even at the time of her sailing, the Arnolds were determined not to take any more persons than absolutely necessary into their confidence. Arnold had written to his brother in Germany a letter saying that a "terrible calamity had befallen the family," but they "did not wish to spoil their Christmas holiday by telling about it." As Mrs. Arnold sailed her husband cabled briefly to his brother telling him to furnish her with funds if needed.

Like the public, Dorothy Arnold's uncle and aunt got the first intimation of what had happened on the morning of Jan. 26, 1911, when the story of the disappearance appeared in all the newspapers of the leading cities of the United States and Europe. Deputy Police Commissioner Flynn, now chief of the Secret Service, on the day before told Arnold that his detectives had to have the aid of the newspapers. The "confidential" search had failed.

At the same time that the reporters were asked to aid the family. Word of Mrs. Arnold's visit to Florence and her meeting there with Griscom was kept a secret. "She is too sick to be seen," was the only explanation offered when reporters inquired for her. Two days later, however, it became known that George S. Griscom "was the man in the case." It then became known that the young woman less than two months before she left her family had been in Boston, where, according to the records of a loan company, she had obtained $60 for a quantity of jewelry that had been pawned.

George Griscom was Boston at the time, but if he and Dorothy met there at the time the information was never communicated to the public. It was admitted Dorothy on her return to New York rented a mail box in the general postoffice and that she quite regularly corresponded with Griscom. The letters she wrote him were in his possession the day Mrs. Arnold and her elder son John, saw him in Florence. As she demanded them John Arnold felled Griscom with a blow on the jaw. Then a promise was exacted from Griscom that he would never reveal the contents of the letters. Griscom has until this day kept his word as far as known.

Mrs. Arnold, on entering the lower bay on the steamship Pannonia, received a message from her attorneys and her two sons, John and D. Hinckley, met her at the pier. On their advice she declined to go into any details of her daughter's disappearance. John Arnold, in an interview with the then District Attorney Whitman, six days after the arrival of his mother from Italy, said he was convinced that Dorothy had committed suicide. He did not suggest that she might have met with foul play, nor did he ask for a grand jury investigation of her disappearance.

House in Pittsburgh Raided.

That the family lawyers at first shared with the detectives the belief that Dorothy Arnold bought a box of candy and a book with the intention of passing away time while riding on a railroad train was evident some time after the investigation was under way when John Keith, head of the Arnolds' legal representatives, said he had searched a sanitarium on the outskirts of Pittsburgh which was raided in April, 1913, by the Pittsburgh County authorities, who charged its proprietor with the death of a young woman who had been missing from her home for nearly a year.

A few days after this raid and the mention in the newspapers of Dorothy's name in connection with the investigation of the place, Arnold sent for the reporters and invited them to go thru his East Seventy-ninth street house from cellar to garret. He repeated his belief that his daughter would never be found.

The police records show that of the women who are daily reported as missing there are but few who, under any compulsion, give up the luxuries of homes so that they may wander about as fancy dictates. Some go away because of quarrels, others because they tire of being "pampered" by indulgent mothers, brothers and sisters, and others want to get away from the scene of some lovers' quarrel.

Dorothy Arnold was a girl of romantic ideas. She incorporated some of these in manuscripts, hoping to have them published. She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr, and after her schooling she began writing novels — which were never published.

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Did Dorothy Arnold take her family into her confidence? Has everything been told? Has any evidence been found to point to the theory that she is dead? Could she have been murdered and her body disposed of? Was there a suggested motive for murder? Did she by act or word suggest a reason for leaving home? These questions have been asked by the leading detectives of the world.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 3.

Note: The case was never solved.