VI

THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK

On the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 1899, Mrs. Arthur W. Clarke, the young wife of a British publisher’s agent residing at 159 East Sixty-fifth Street, New York, found this advertisement in theNew York Herald, under the heading, “Employment Wanted:”

GIRL (20) as child’s nurse; no experience in city. Nurse, 274Herald, Twenty-third Street.

The following Tuesday Mrs. Clarke took into her employment, as attendant for her little daughter, Marion, twenty months old, a pretty young woman, who gave the name of Carrie Jones and said she had come only two weeks before from the little town of Deposit, in upper New York State. The fact explained her lack of references. Mrs. Clarke, far from being suspicious because of the absence of employment papers, was impressed with the new child’s maid. She seemed to be a well-schooled, even-tempered young woman, considerably above her station, devoted to children, and, what was particularly noted, gentle in voice and demeanor—a jewel among servants.

Five days later pretty Carrie Jones and Baby Marion Clarke had become the center of one of the celebrated abduction cases and, for a little while, the nucleus of a dark and appalling mystery. To-day, after the lapse of twenty-five years, the effects of this striking affair are still to be read in the precautions hedging the employment of nursemaids in American cities and in the timidity of parents everywhere. It was one of those occasional and impressive crimes which leave their mark on social habits and public behavior long after the details or the incidents themselves have been forgotten.

The home of Marion Clarke’s parents in East Sixty-fifth Street is about two squares from the city’s great playground, Central Park, a veritable warren of children and their maids on every sunny day. Here Marion Clarke went almost every afternoon with her new nurse, and here the first scene of the ensuing drama was played.

At about ten thirty o’clock on the morning of the next Sunday, May 21, Carrie Jones went to Mrs. Clarke and asked if she might not take the little girl to the Park then, as the day was warm, and the sunshine inviting. In the afternoon it might be too hot. Mrs. Clarke and her husband consented, and the maid set off a little before eleven o’clock with Baby Marion tucked into a wicker carriage. She was told to return by one o’clock, so that the child might have her luncheon at the usual hour.

At twelve o’clock Mr. Clarke set off for a walk in the Park, also tempted from his home by the enchantments of the day. Mrs. Clarke did not accompany him, since she had borne a second baby only two or three months before, and she was still confined to the house.

Mr. Clarke entered the Park at the Sixty-sixth Street entrance and followed the paths idly along toward the old arsenal. Without especially seeking his daughter and her nurse, he nevertheless kept an eye out. A short distance from the arsenal he saw his child’s cart standing in front of the rest room; he approached, expecting to see the child. Both baby and nurse were gone, and the attendant explained that the child’s vehicle had been left in her care, while the nurse bore the baby to the menagerie.

“She said she’d be back in about an hour. Ought to be here any minute now,” prattled the public employee.

The father sat down to wait. Then he grew impatient and went off to wander through the animal gardens. In half an hour he was back at the rest room to find the attendant about to move the cart indoors and make her departure, her tour of duty being over.

Beginning to feel alarmed, Mr. Clarke resorted to the nearest policeman, who smiled, with the confidence of long experience, and advised him to go home. It was a common thing for a green country girl to get lost among the winding drives and walks of Central Park. No doubt the nurse would find her way home with the child in a little while.

Clarke went back to his house and waited. At two o’clock he went excitedly back to the Park and consulted the captain of police, with the same results. The officers were ordered to look for the nurse and child, but the alarm of the parent was not shared. He was once more told to go home and wait. At the same time he was rather pointedly told not to return with his annoying inquiries. Such temporary disappearances of children happened every day.

The harried father went home and paced the floor. His enervated wife wept and trembled with apprehension. At four o’clock the doorbell rang, and the father rushed excitedly to answer.

A bright-eyed, grinning boy stood in the vestibule and asked if Mr. Clarke lived here. Then he handed over a letter in a plain white envelope, lingering a moment, as if expecting a tip.

Clarke naturally tore the letter open with quaking fingers and read:

“Mrs Clark: Do not look for your nurse and baby. They are safe in our possession, where they will remain for the present. If the matter is kept out of the hands of the police and newspapers, you will get your baby back, safe and sound.“If, instead, you make a big time about it and publish it all over, we will see to it that you never see her alive again. We are driven to this by the fact that we cannot get work, and one of us has a child dying through want of proper treatment and nourishment.“Your baby is safe and in good hands. The nurse girl is still with her. If everything is quiet, you will hear from us Monday or Tuesday.“Three.”

“If, instead, you make a big time about it and publish it all over, we will see to it that you never see her alive again. We are driven to this by the fact that we cannot get work, and one of us has a child dying through want of proper treatment and nourishment.

“Your baby is safe and in good hands. The nurse girl is still with her. If everything is quiet, you will hear from us Monday or Tuesday.

“Three.”

The letter was correctly done, properly paragraphed, punctuated, and printed with a fine pen in a somewhat laborious simulation of writing-machine type. It also bore several markings characteristic of the journalist or publisher’s copy reader, especially three parallel lines drawn under the signature, “Three,” evidently to indicate capitals. The envelope was the common plain white kind, but the sheet of paper on which the note had been penned was of the white unglazed and uncalendared kind known as newsprint and used in all newspaper offices as copy paper. Accordingly it was at once suspected that the kidnapper must have been a newspaper man, printer, reader, or some one connected with a publishing house.

The Clarkes recalled that the nurse had been alone the preceding Friday evening and had been writing. Evidently she had prepared the note at that time and had been planning the abduction with foresight and care. People at once reached the conclusion that she was one of the agents of a great band of professional kidnappers. Accordingly every child and every mother in the city stood in peril.

To indicate the nature of the official search, we may as well reproduce Chief of Police Devery’s proclamation:

“Arrest for abduction—Carrie Jones, twenty-one years of age, five feet two inches tall, dark hair and eyes, pale face, high check bones, teeth prominent in lower jaw, American by birth; wore a white straw sailor hat with black band, military pin on side, blue-check shirt waist, black brilliantine skirt, black lace bicycle boots, white collar and black tie.“Abducted on Sunday May 21, 1899, Marion Clarke, daughter of Arthur W. Clarke, of this city, and described as follows: twenty months old, light complexion, blue eyes, light hair, had twelve teeth, four in upper jaw, four in lower jaw, and four in back. There is a space between two upper front teeth, and red birthmark on back. Wore rose-colored dress, white silk cap, black stockings, and black buttoned shoes.“Make careful inquiry and distribute these circulars in all institutions, foundling asylums, and places where children of the above age are received.”

“Abducted on Sunday May 21, 1899, Marion Clarke, daughter of Arthur W. Clarke, of this city, and described as follows: twenty months old, light complexion, blue eyes, light hair, had twelve teeth, four in upper jaw, four in lower jaw, and four in back. There is a space between two upper front teeth, and red birthmark on back. Wore rose-colored dress, white silk cap, black stockings, and black buttoned shoes.

“Make careful inquiry and distribute these circulars in all institutions, foundling asylums, and places where children of the above age are received.”

A photograph of the missing child accompanied the description.

So the quest began. It was, however, by no means confined to Carrie Jones and the child. The New York newspaper reporters were early convinced that some one else stood behind the transaction, and they sought night and day for a man or woman connected either directly or distantly with their own profession. It was the day when the reporter prided himself especially on his superior acumen as a sleuth, with the result that every effort was made to give a fresh demonstration of journalistic enterprise and shrewdness.

Several days of the most feverish hunting, accompanied by a sharp rise in public emotionalism and the incipience of panic among parents, failed, however, to produce even the most shadowy results. Rumors and suspicions were, as usual, numerous and fatuous, but there came forth nothing that had the earmarks of the genuine clew. The arrests of innocent young women were many, and numerous little girls were dragged to police stations by the usual crop of fanatics.

Similarly, little Marion Clarke was reported from all parts of the surrounding country and even from the most distant places. One report had her on her way to England, another showed her as having sailed for Sweden, a third report was that she had been taken to Australia by a childless couple. All the other common hypotheses were, of course, entertained. A bereaved mother had taken little Marion to fill the void of her own loss. A childless woman had stolen the little girl and was using her to present as her own offspring, probably to comply with the provisions of some freak will.

But the hard fact remained that a letter had come within four hours after the abduction of the child, and before there had been the first note of alarm or publicity. Such an epistle could only have been written by the actual kidnapper, since no one else was privy to the fact that the girl was gone. In that communication the writer had stated his or her case very definitely and, while not actually demanding ransom or naming a sum, had clearly indicated the intention of making such a subsequent demand.

Theorizing was thus a bit sterile. The police, be it said to their credit, bothered themselves with no fine-spun hypotheses, but clung to the main track and sought the kidnappers. TheNew York Worldoffered a reward of a thousand dollars and put its most efficient reportorial workers into the search. The other newspapers also kept their men going in shifts. Every possible trail was followed to its end, every promising part of the city searched. Even the most inane reports were investigated with diligence.

Hundreds of persons had gone to the police with bits of information which they, no doubt, considered suggestive or important. The well-known Captain McClusky, then chief of detectives, received these often wearisome callers, read their mail, directed the investigation of their reports, and often remained at his desk late into the night.

Among a large number of women who reported to the detective chief was a Mrs. Cosgriff, a sharp and voluble Irishwoman, who maintained a rooming house in Twenty-seventh street, Brooklyn. Mrs. Cosgriff asserted that two women with a little girl of Marion Clarke’s age and general appearance had rented a room from her on the evening of the eventful Sunday and spent the night there. The next morning one of them had got the newspapers, gone to her room, remained secluded with the other woman and child for a time, and had then come out to announce that they would not remain another day. Mrs. Cosgriff thought she detected excitement in the manner of both women, but she had to admit that the child had made no complaint or outcry. Nevertheless, she felt that these were the wanted people.

Had she noted anything of special interest about the child, any peculiarity by which the parents might recognize her? Or had she heard the women mention any town or place to which they might have gone?

The lodging-house keeper considered a moment, confessed that her curiosity had led her to do a little spying, and recalled that she had heard one of the women mention a town. Either she had not heard the name distinctly, or she had forgotten part of it, but it was a name ending in berg or burg. She was certain of that. Fitchburg, Pittsburg, Williamsburg, Plattsburg—something like that. She did not know the reason for her feeling, but she was sure it was a place not very far from New York.

As to a peculiarity of the child, she had noted nothing except that it seemed good-humored, healthy, and clever. She had heard one of the women say: “Come on, baby! Show us how Mrs. Blank does.” Evidently the little girl had done some sort of impersonation.

Captain McClusky was inclined to place some credence in Mrs. Cosgriff’s account, but he saw no special promise in her revelations till he repeated the details to the agonized parents. At the mention of the childish impersonation, Mrs. Clarke leaped up in excitement.

“That was Marion!” she cried. “That’s one of her little tricks!”

It developed that the nurse, Carrie Jones, had spent hours playing with the child, teaching it to walk and pose like a certain affected woman friend of its mother. Undoubtedly then, Marion Clarke, Carrie Jones, and another woman had been in South Brooklyn the evening after the abduction and spent the night and part of the next day at Mrs. Cosgriff’s, leaving in the afternoon for a town whose name ended in burg or berg.

Now the chase began in earnest. The detectives made a list of towns with the burg termination, and one or two men were sent to each, with instructions to make a quiet, but thorough, search. Information of a confidential kind was also forwarded to the police departments of other cities, near and far. As a result a number of suspected young women were picked up. Indeed, the mystery was believed solved for a short time when a girl answering to the description of Carrie Jones was seized in Connecticut and held for the arrival of the New York detectives, when she began to act mysteriously and failed to give a clear account of herself. It was found, however, that she had other substantial reasons for being cryptic, and that she was, moreover, enjoying her little joke on the officials.

Again, in Pennsylvania a girl was held who would neither affirm nor deny that she was Carrie Jones, but let the local police have the very definite impression that they had in hand the much-hunted kidnapper. She turned out to be an unfortunate pathologue of the self-accusatory type. Her one real link with the affair was that her name happened to be Jones, a circumstance which got the members of this large and popular family of citizens no little discomfort during the pendency of the Clarke mystery.

Meantime no further communication had been received from the abductors. They had said, in the single note received from them, that they would communicate Monday or Tuesday, “if everything is quiet.” Everything, far from being quiet, had been in a most plangent uproar, which circumstances alone should have been recognized as the reason for silence. But, as is usual, the clear and patent explanation seemed not to contain enough for popular acceptance. More fanciful interpretations were put forward in the usual variety of forms. The note had been sent merely to misguide, and one might be sure the abductors did not intend to return Baby Marion. If the abductors were looking for ransom, why had no more been heard? Why had they chosen the daughter of a man who had slender means and from whom no large ransom could be expected? No, it was something more sinister still. Probably Little Marion was dead.

As the days dragged by, and there were still no conclusive developments, the public sympathy toward the stricken couple became expressive and dramatic. Crowds besieged the house in East Sixty-fifth Street in hope of catching sight of the bereaved mother. The father was greeted with cheers and sympathetic expressions whenever he came or went. Many offers of aid were received, and some came forward who wanted to pay whatever ransom might be demanded.

~~ MARION CLARKE ~~

In these various ways the Marion Clarke case came to be a national and even an international sensation in the brief course of a week. Sympathy with the parents was instant and widespread, and passion against the abductors filled the newspaper correspondence columns with suggestions in favor of more stringent laws, plans for cruel vengeance on the kidnappers, complaints against the police, fulminations directed at quite every one connected with the unfortunate affair—all the usual expressions of helplessness and bafflement.

On the morning of Thursday, June 1st, eleven days after the disappearance, a woman with a little girl entered the general store at the little hamlet of St. John, N. Y., where Mrs. Ada B. Corey presided as postmistress to the community. The child was a little petulant and noisy; the woman very annoyed and nervous. Both were strangers. The woman gave her name as Beauregard and took one or two letters which had come for her. With these and the little girl she made a quick departure.

Because of the great excitement and wide publicity of the Clarke case, nothing of the sort could happen so near the city of New York without one inevitable result. The postmistress immediately notified Deputy Sheriff William Charleston of Rockland County, who had his office in St. John. Charleston was able to locate the woman and child before they could leave town, and he covertly followed them to the farmhouse of Frank Oakley, in the heart of the Ramapo Mountain region, near Sloatsburg, about nineteen miles from Haverstraw, on the Hudson River.

The rural officer discovered, by making a few inquiries, that this Mrs. Beauregard had been known in the vicinity for some months, and she had been occupying the Oakley house with her husband. Ten days previously, however, she had appeared with another woman and the little girl.

The dates tallied; the town was Sloatsburg; there were, or had been, two women; the place was ideal for hiding, and the child was of the proper age and description. Sheriff Charleston quickly summoned some other officers, descended on the place, seized the woman, the child, and the husband, locked them into the nearest jail, and sent word to Captain McClusky.

New York detectives and reporters arrived by the next train, and Mr. Clarke came a short time later. As soon as he was on the ground, the party proceeded to the jail, and the weeping father caught his wandering girl into happy arms. She was indeed Marion Clarke. Within ten minutes every available telephone and telegraph wire was humming the triumphant message back to New York.

But, in the recovery of the child, the inner mystery of the case only began to unfold itself. The woman seized at Sloatsburg was not Carrie Jones. Neither had the Clarkes ever seen her before. She gave the name of Mrs. George Beauregard, and, when questioned about this matter, later “admitted” that she was really Mrs. Jennie Wilson. Her story was that a couple had brought the child to her, saying that it needed to remain in the mountains for the summer. They had paid her for the little girl’s board and care. She declared she did not know their address, but they would certainly be on hand in the fall to reclaim their baby.

The man arrested at the farmhouse said that he was James Wilson; that he had no employment at the time, except working on the farm, and that he knew nothing of the baby beyond what his wife had revealed. He didn’t interfere in such affairs.

Both were returned to New York after some slight delay. The detectives and the newspapers at once went to work on the problem of discovering who they were, and what had become of Carrie Jones.

Meantime the abducted child was being brought home to her distracted mother. A crowd of several thousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth Street, apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the evening newspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loaded with presents, saluted by the public officials, and treated as the heroine that circumstance and good police work had made her. Photographs of her crowded the journals, and she was altogether the most famous youngster of the day. Her parents later removed to Boston with her, and they were heard of in the succeeding years when attempts were made to release the imprisoned kidnappers, or whenever there was another kidnapping or missing-child case. In time they passed back into obscurity, and Marion Clarke disappeared from the glare of notoriety.

The work of identifying the man and woman caught in the Sloatsburg farmhouse proceeded rapidly. Freddy Lang, the boy who had brought the note to the Clarke door on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediately recognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman who had handed him the missive and a five-cent piece in Second Avenue and asked him to deliver the note to Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn and said that the prisoner was one of the two women who had stayed at her house on that Sunday night. It was apparent then that one of the active kidnappers, and not an innocent tool, had been caught. The woman and her husband, however, denied everything and refused to give any information about themselves.

Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned in an attempt to make the identification complete, discover just who the prisoners were, and establish their connections with others believed to have financed the kidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister than mere abduction for ransom was suspected, and it seemed to be indicated by certain facts that will appear presently. Accordingly the reporters and journalistic investigators were conducting a fresh search on very broad lines.

On the evening of the second of June this hunt came to an abrupt close, when a reporter traced the mysterious Carrie Jones to the home of an aunt at White Oak Ridge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her the admission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a country girl who had been for no long period a waitress in the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, New York. Bella Anderson readily told who the captive man and woman were, and how the kidnapping plot had been concocted and carried out. Her story may be summarized to clear the ground.

Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter of a retired soldier who had seen service in India and Africa. At the age of fourteen, her parents being dead, she and her brother, Samuel, had set out for America and been received by relatives in the States of New York and New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooled and aided financially both by her brother and other relatives. The year before the kidnapping she had gone to New York to make her own way. At the Mills Hotel, in the course of her duties, she had met Mr. and Mrs. George Beauregard Barrow. They had been kind to her and become her intimates, nursing her through an illness and otherwise befriending a lonely creature.

The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrested pair, had persuaded her that the work of waiting on table in a hotel was too arduous and advised her to seek employment in a private family as nurse to a child. In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunity to seize some rich man’s darling and exact a heavy ransom for its return. All this part of the business they would manage for her. All she needed to do was to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this she was to receive one half of whatever ransom might be collected.

Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for a place as child’s nurse. Several parents answered. At the first two homes she was just too late to procure employment, other applicants having anticipated her. So it was mere chance that took her to the Clarke home and determined Marion Clarke to be the victim.

The girl went on to recite that the Barrows had coached her carefully. They had instructed her in the matter of her lack of references, in the manner of taking the child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in the details of an inoffensive account of her past, and so on through the list. They had been the mentors and the “master minds.”

After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a few days and had taken little Marion to the Park the first time, Mrs. Barrow had consulted with the nurse and instructed her to be ready for the abduction on the next excursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered many qualms and been unable to bring herself to the deed for several visits. Each time Mrs. Barrow met her in the Park and was ready to flee with the little girl. Finally the nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noon she found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. They left the baby’s cart at the rest room, carried the child to a remote place, changed its coat and cap, and then set out at once for South Brooklyn, where they took the room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to, the women exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returned to Manhattan, gave the note to the boy, and turned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she had seen the headlines in the newspapers, realized that the game was dangerous, and set out quickly for Sloatsburg, where the farmhouse had been rented in advance by Barrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sent away because the Barrows felt she was being too hotly sought and might be recognized in the neighborhood.

This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrows naturally sought to shield themselves. It was also discovered that Mrs. Barrow had been an Addie McNally, born and reared in up-State New York, and that she, with her husband, had once owned a small printing establishment, thus explaining the chirographical characteristics of the Clarke abduction note. She was about twenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not unattractive.

Investigation brought out romantic and pathetic facts concerning the husband. He had apparently had no better employment in New York than that of motorman in the hire of an electric cab company then operating in that city. But this derelict was the son of distinguished parents. His father was Judge John C. Barrow of the superior court of Little Rock, Arkansas, and the descendant of other persons politically well known in the South. George Beauregard Barrow—his middle name being that of the famous Confederate commander at the first battle of Bull Run or Manassas, to whom distant relationship was claimed—had been incorrigible from childhood. In early manhood he had been connected with kidnapping threats and plots in his home city and with assaults on his enemies, with the result that he was finally sent away, cut off and told to make his own berth in the world. Judge Barrow tried to aid his unfortunate son at the trial, but public feeling was too sorely aroused.

George Barrow and Bella Anderson were tried before Judge Fursman and quickly convicted. Barrow was sentenced to fourteen years and ten months, and the Anderson girl to four years, both judge and jury accepting her statement that she had been no more than a pawn in the hands of shrewder and older conspirators. Mrs. Barrow, sensing the direction of the wind, took a plea of guilty before Judge Werner, hoping for clemency. The court, however, said that her crime merited the gravest reprehension and severest punishment. He fixed her term at twelve years and ten months.

These trials were had, and the sentences imposed within six weeks of the kidnapping, the courts having acted with despatch. While the cases were pending, Barrow, Mrs. Barrow, and the Anderson girl had again and again been asked to reveal the names of others who had induced them to their crime or had financed them. All said there had been no other conspirators, but the feeling persisted that Barrow had acted with the support of professional criminals, or of some enemy of the Clarkes, either of whom had supplied him with considerable sums of money.

This belief, which was specially strong with some of the newspapers, was predicated upon two facts.

On the morning of Thursday, May 25, four days after the abduction of Marion Clarke, there had appeared in theNew York Heraldthe following advertisement:

“M. F. two thousand dollars reward will be O. K. in Baby Clarke case. Write again and let me know when and where I can meet you Thursday evening. Don’t fail—strictly confidential.”

Neither the Clarkes, the newspapers, nor any persons acting for them knew anything about a two-thousand-dollar-reward offer or had communicated with any one who had been promised such a sum. Hence there were only two possible explanations of the advertisement. Either it had been inserted by some unbalanced person who wanted to create a stir—the kind of restless neurotic who projects his unwelcome apparition into every sensation—or there was really some dark force moving behind the kidnapping.

A second fact led many to persist in this latter notion. In spite of the fact that George Barrow had been disowned at home and driven from his town, and opposed to the circumstances that he had worked at common and ill-paid jobs, had been unable to pay his rent for eleven months, had been seen in the shabbiest clothes and was known to be in need—the only force that might have prompted him to attempt a kidnapping—he was found to have a considerable sum in his pockets when searched at the jail; he informed his wife that he would get plenty of cash for their defense, and he was shown to have expended a fairly large sum on the planning of the crime, the traveling and other expenses, the rent of the farmhouse, the needs of Bella Anderson, and for his own amusement. Where had this come from?

Not only the public and the newspapers, but Detective Chief McClusky were long occupied with this enigma. Barrow himself gave various specious explanations and finally refused to say more. Hints and bruits of all kinds were current. Many said that Arthur Clarke could furnish the answer if he would, an accusation which the harried father indignantly rejected.

In the end the guilty trio went to prison, the Clarkes removed to Boston, the public interest flagged, and the mystery remained unsolved.

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