Gypsy Girl Bride Held for Ransom

1920

Father Gives Her Up When Hubby Pays $500

This is Romany Custom, Explains Parent

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The kidnapping of Mrs. Lena Stevens from her home in Cleveland by her father, who held her from her young husband for $500 ransom, has been explained. Instead of finding a villainous parent, Newark detectives learned of a gypsy custom which made the "ransom" legitimate.

George Stevens married Lena Judson, a gypsy, about a year ago. They hit the gypsy trail by automobile, slept outdoors, cooked their meals in the fields and enjoyed a prolonged honeymoon.

Father Starts on Their Trail

Through a mysterious channel Ephraim Judson, the father of the bride, heard that his son-in-law was mistreating his daughter. So he set out to find the couple. When he found them he discovered that the reports were false and had been spread by a rival for the girl's hand.

Judson then demanded $500. He said he had spent this amount of money in ascertaining that his son-in-law was the right kind of husband. Stevens promised to pay, and the couple returned to their Cleveland home.

But the money was not forthcoming, and a week or two ago Mrs. Stevens disappeared. The husband told the police, and they decided it was a case of kidnapping when he showed a letter asking $500 for the return of his wife. Stevens searched and finally found her at her father's home in this city.

Both Wait for $500

Judson explained the circumstances of the "kidnapping," and the son-in-law wired his father in Cleveland to send him $500, so he could get his bride.

The police found the young husband living with the gypsies in a small store in Newark, New Jersey. He explained that his father-in-law, by gypsy custom, was entitled to the $500.

So Stevens is in Newark, hoping his father will send him the $500, while Mrs. Stevens is in New York, hoping her father gets the $500. And husband and wife are hoping to be reunited soon.

Hears From Daughter Who Was Kidnapped 12 Years Ago

1910

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 2. — A letter in the mail of Francis E. Fairman, a notary, with offices in the Frick building, deeply interested him, but when he reached the bottom of the first page he leaped from his chair and shouted "My daughter. Thank heaven I have heard from her at last — the first time in twelve years since she was kidnapped from me."

In a few days the kidnapped girl, Edith May Fairman, aged 19, now a trained nurse in Norwalk, Conn., will come here to live with her father and brother.

When Fairman recovered his composure he said:

"Twelve years ago I was a prosperous business man in Brooklyn, N. Y. One day I went home from my office to find my wife had disappeared. She was tired of me, she said in a letter several months later. A month after she left I went to St. Louis, where I stayed six months as an engineer in the employ of the United States army. Then I returned to Brooklyn.

"One evening several weeks afterward I returned home from my office to find that my daughter had disappeared. Several months later a letter, dated at a town in Nova Scotia, demanded $10,000 for her return home. I didn't have that amount of money, so I went to Nova Scotia to see if I could find my daughter. I made five trips before I found her.

"Trains run only once a week from the little town where I recovered my daughter and while we waited at a hotel I allowed her to attend school. The first day she went to school she didn't return to me, and I haven't seen her since."

—New Castle News, New Castle, PA, Nov. 2, 1910, p. 6.