NY NY - Alice Parsons: Heiress, Long Island, 1937

[Ausgirl]

PP - you're welcome! Glad I could help. And lol.. I totally understand the 'forest from the trees' thing, I spend a lot of time looking for forests.

Zwei, --thankyou-- for offering to do the timeline. They always are a LOT of work, so I think there's no hurry on it.

If it helps, I could comb the thread for media links for the link thread and post them?

And wow.... poor Mr. Z!!! He has some kind of exciting life, huh? I do hope all is well, there. Sounds a bit scary!

 

[youshouldveknown]

This is an interesting story! I've read the entire thread over the course of a few days and I am not only intrigued but impressed. I don't know what I can offer, but I'd certainly like to help in any way that I can. I've always been interested in Russia, its monarchy and its culture. I also have an account to ancestry.com (although I suspect some of you guys have one as well) so I may just start there.

 

[Ausgirl]

Welcome YSK (can I call you that? saves me a little extra typing, lol) - and yes, do join in! It sure is a fascinating case, not only for the crime but for the history that comes with it. And the more, the merrier, ofc. =)

 

[Marilynilpa]

Oh, I will have trouble with the timeline - I always do. I'll do it a bit at a time then post them here for corrections, so the thread doesn't get boring.

I would have posted the first bit tonight, but so far today I have had - a headache from slipping down an icy cliff path; Mr Z is at an hotel with work and has 1) called me to tell me there are gunshots outside his window; 2) called me to tell me he is lost in a blizzard; 3) called me to tell me he has accidentally wandered into an inhabited royal palace and a police car is circling slowly around him.

That's ironic given our recent topic of conversation, but it's all meant I've been a little distracted today.

ETA: gunshots were fireworks and he has reached his hotel safely now!

Glad all is well with Mr. Z.

On your timeline, will you also include dates/events that occurred after Alice's disappearance? If so, please include July 22, 1940 - that's the day Anna and William were married in Hollister, CA.

 

[zwiebel]

Will do. I'm going to follow the superb examples I've seen from Angelo and cloudajo on the Bob Harrod thread - cover everything, and then some!

 

[zwiebel]

This is an interesting story! I've read the entire thread over the course of a few days and I am not only intrigued but impressed. I don't know what I can offer, but I'd certainly like to help in any way that I can. I've always been interested in Russia, its monarchy and its culture. I also have an account to ancestry.com (although I suspect some of you guys have one as well) so I may just start there.

Welcome! And if you can think of any way I can format a question that might actually provoke an answer on that Alexander Palace Russian Royals' forum, I'd be very grateful!

 

[zwiebel]

PP - you're welcome! Glad I could help. And lol.. I totally understand the 'forest from the trees' thing, I spend a lot of time looking for forests.

Zwei, --thankyou-- for offering to do the timeline. They always are a LOT of work, so I think there's no hurry on it.

If it helps, I could comb the thread for media links for the link thread and post them?

And wow.... poor Mr. Z!!! He has some kind of exciting life, huh? I do hope all is well, there. Sounds a bit scary!

I think the media links thing would be great. Can you post them in the media thread I started, here?:

NY Alice Parsons: Media links and timeline. - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community


ETA Mr Z doesn't have an exciting life - he makes excitment because he hasn't got a bit of commonsense, imo!

 

[Marilynilpa]

This is an interesting story! I've read the entire thread over the course of a few days and I am not only intrigued but impressed. I don't know what I can offer, but I'd certainly like to help in any way that I can. I've always been interested in Russia, its monarchy and its culture. I also have an account to ancestry.com (although I suspect some of you guys have one as well) so I may just start there.

If you search for Roy Dimitri Kuprianova Parsons (Soni), you will see his name on a family tree on ancestry.com. One word of warning, though - it shows his father as Alexander Kuprianov, which is incorrect. I'm not sure how Roy fits into this family tree, if it's via Kuprianov or Soni.

But that family tree might provide some answers about Roy's background and maybe even Anna's.

Happy hunting!

 

[Marilynilpa]

Guys, I have over 20 pages of media links for articles about Alice. Rather than putting them all on our list, I'll wait and see what you guys come up with. If I have any that I don't see on the finished list, I'll add them.

Unless anyone can come up with a better way of doing it?:waitasec:

 

[Ausgirl]

Sounds good! I was about to start the list now, actually (might take me a couple hours in between chores... dang chores... )

 

[zwiebel]

Guys, I have over 20 pages of media links for articles about Alice. Rather than putting them all on our list, I'll wait and see what you guys come up with. If I have any that I don't see on the finished list, I'll add them.

Unless anyone can come up with a better way of doing it?:waitasec:

20 pages? We only have 19 in our entire thread, so we'll definitely have some gaps!

 

[Marilynilpa]

Sounds good! I was about to start the list now, actually (might take me a couple hours in between chores... dang chores... )

I hate it when chores get in the way of my sleuthing!:floorlaugh:

 

[Pink Panther]

At the time that Alexander K applied for naturalization, Anna was in Stony Brook (about 55 minutes away from where he lived). When she applied for naturalization, she entered an address that was 15 minutes away from where Alexander K lived. An odd note about her application. She applied in 1932 and was already working at Stony Brook. I had always assumed that she was also living there. Her application however, gives a different address. I find that strange given that the Parsons had so readily "adopted" her and Roy.

Just thinking out loud.

ETA - One suggestion I would give about the timeline...It's best not to enter information that doesn't have a link. If information is entered without a link, at the very least, there should be a note as to why one thinks the information is legitimate.

 

[Ausgirl]

Just reading an article now, about the division of the will, etc. As we know, Roy was left a lot of money but it just kind of hit home how much he was left, money to make sure he was okay no matter what (or that Alice did okay, says my 'suspicion Jiminy' in the back of my mind..). Reading it, I couldn't help thinking - a childless woman, surrounded by people who value family.. it must've been hard on Alice. I have no doubt she really came to love and cherish Roy as her own -- I wonder too what role each woman played in his upbringing, what parental rights Alice had or shared..

It made me sad for her. I have little doubt Roy was bait in getting her to change her will, before she was 'disappeared'.

Anyway. The lunch dishes are staring at me sullenly, while I relax here with a nice cup of coffee, copying links. Talk to the hand, dishes! :hand:

 

[Ausgirl]

This case is such a rabbit hole!

Probably quite OT, but an interesting article on 'family friend' L F Deutzman, a Jewish anti-KKK activist (as well as a Pinkerton man, apparently!!):

The Klan was evident in Huntington and throughout Long Island in the 20's, said Mitzi Caputo, curator of the Huntington Historical Society, which published ''Suffolk, a Pictorial History'' by Christopher Vagts in 1983. That book states that racism was part of the Klan creed.

''They wore open or no hoods,'' Miss Caputo said. ''Businessmen and residents of Catholic and Jewish faiths were harassed. There were courageous individuals who stood up and decried what the Klan stood for.''

One of those was Lawrence F. Deutzman. His daughter Muriel Spahr, who lives in Smithtown, recounted how her father had interrupted a Klan meeting at the Assembly Hall on Main Street. '' 'He strode into the closed meeting,'' Mrs. Spahr is quoted by Mr. Gish as having said, ''and told the local Smithtown members gathered that they should 'be ashamed of themselves for having such a meeting and that they should go home to their families.' ''

Mr. Deutzman, owner and publisher of The Smithtown Messenger, returned to his home, where later in the evening ''the family endured the expected -- a burning cross was set on their lawn.''

-- from this article

I think the Sammis' were Jewish as well.

From whom did Alice inherit her 'interest' in the Silas Sammis house, I wonder?

 

[Marilynilpa]

This case is such a rabbit hole!

Probably quite OT, but an interesting article on 'family friend' L F Deutzman, a Jewish anti-KKK activist (as well as a Pinkerton man, apparently!!):



-- from this article

I think the Sammis' were Jewish as well.

From whom did Alice inherit her 'interest' in the Silas Sammis house, I wonder?

Alice inherited partial interests in a few properties from Colonel Williams, including the Sammis property.

I don't believe the Sammis family was Jewish. They were active in the Old First Church in Huntington, Long Island since as early as the 1700s.

 

[Ausgirl]

Awesome, thanks, Marilyn! dk where I got the Sammis/jewish thing from now.. such are rabbit holes. Cheers! Deutzman sure was an interesting and accomplished fellow, though.

Maddeningly, the copy of the paper where Deutzman gives his reasons for believing Alice went off voluntarily are smudged - the bits I can see hint to something scandalous, I think (mentions a "furore"), and I wanna know what that was. Pehraps, though, he's just saying she was reluctant to come home because of all the fuss.

eta: I am Spammy McSpammerson today.. sorry >< But I can't help reading all the articles I'm linking at the link thread.. the one that mentions garbagemen and the odd bannage from the cellar also mentions that the car was in the garage when they came - Anna had told police it was parked out front of the house all day (and hence, one would suppose, available to note-leaving kidnappers..). This was seen as a pretty significant development, apparently.


It's pretty darned plain they had Anna pinned as prime suspect.

This was interesting - a Ukranian hall raided for a kidnap gang: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1f4ZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_w0EAAAAIBAJ&dq=parsons kidnap&pg=6862,675414

 

[Marilynilpa]

Here is Lawrence Deutzman's obituary. I don't think he was Jewish, either.

http://apa3.olivesoftware.com/Defau...o=%30%31%2f%30%31%2f%32%30%30%31&ViewMode=GIF

I wonder what he knew about Alice and William?

 

[Ausgirl]

Ahaha. Omg, what's wrong with me today? Seeing menorahs everywhere. I was tracking the wrong family, is what - there's a Deutzman family connected to some odd murder + spy business in 1940 and they were Czech jews. Unless I'm wrong again.. :shakehead:

Another Anna-connected small bit of oddness and BS: Anna said Alice had an appointment with a Mrs. Ruth Burdin that day, in Huntington, around the time frame that Alice disappeared. Mrs. Burdin said there was no such appointment at all, and she'd been in New York all day.

Mrs. Burdin seems to have been a fairly formidable member of Huntington's social and fundraising circles, so (unlike Anna) she seems pretty credible.

Honest mistake, or overly elaborate BS?

 

[Marilynilpa]

Ahaha. Omg, what's wrong with me today? Seeing menorahs everywhere. I was tracking the wrong family, is what - there's a Deutzman family connected to some odd murder + spy business in 1940 and they were Czech jews. Unless I'm wrong again.. :shakehead:

Another Anna-connected small bit of oddness and BS: Anna said Alice had an appointment with a Mrs. Ruth Burdin that day, in Huntington, around the time frame that Alice disappeared. Mrs. Burdin said there was no such appointment at all, and she'd been in New York all day.

Mrs. Burdin seems to have been a fairly formidable member of Huntington's social and fundraising circles, so (unlike Anna) she seems pretty credible.

Honest mistake, or overly elaborate BS?

BBM

I vote for overly elaborate BS!

And now you have me interested in that other Deutzman family - spies and murder? Sounds intriguing, even if it isn't related to our case.