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

[Marilynilpa]

Very good points. I'd like to know who and where 5 year old Roy was before joining his mother at the home. I'm intrigued at the possibility of Roy being William's son. I didn't realize that Ana and Roy took the Parson's name BEFORE Alice disappeared. How would she be okay with that?

First reports were that a blood stained axe was found. Don't know what became of that. Maybe it was determined it was used on the chickens.

Roy was born in England and was 4 years old before coming to the U.S. He is not William Parson's son.

Anna had a series of jobs prior to working for Alice and William Parsons. Her son lived with her.

Alice and William intended to adopt Roy, which is a weird situation if you ask me. As for why Alice supposedly suggested that Anna change her last name to Parsons, I can't figure that one out. Unless after the adoption, they were all going to live together as one big happy family??

About the bloody axe - you're right, it was determined to be non-human blood.

 

[Force Ten]

Roy was born in England and was 4 years old before coming to the U.S. He is not William Parson's son.

Anna had a series of jobs prior to working for Alice and William Parsons. Her son lived with her.

Alice and William intended to adopt Roy, which is a weird situation if you ask me. As for why Alice supposedly suggested that Anna change her last name to Parsons, I can't figure that one out. Unless after the adoption, they were all going to live together as one big happy family??

About the bloody axe - you're right, it was determined to be non-human blood.

Is there confirmation that Alice suggested it? I could see maybe that they wanted to adopt Roy because perhaps they weren't able to have children. But for Ana to also become a Parsons.....very strange situation.

 

[Marilynilpa]

Is there confirmation that Alice suggested it? I could see maybe that they wanted to adopt Roy because perhaps they weren't able to have children. But for Ana to also become a Parsons.....very strange situation.

I agree, a very odd set-up in that household.

I don't have any independent confirmation that Alice suggested it, just media reports that it was her idea. But this was after Alice disappeared, so who knows whether it was true or not.

And if you are going to adopt a woman's child, would you want that woman to continue to be a part of your everyday life? Odd indeed.

 

[fred&edna]

I'm trying to catch up, follow along. Does it appear Anna was married to someone with the last name (Soni) somewhere in this mix as well?

This is fascinating. Maybe you should work on a screenplay... it's already reading like a "movie"


** Re-reading older posts! I see the "Soni" or "Sonirsomi" connection.

 

[zwiebel]

Anna was a good bit younger than the Parsons, wasn't she? Maybe Alice saw it more as a double adoption and looked on Anna as the daughter she never had? I don't know if it was possible in those days to officially adopt an adult - maybe a name change was the next best thing.

I wonder if the chief reason for the adoption of Roy was for inheritance purposes, on the part of both Alice and William?

 

[Marilynilpa]

Anna was a good bit younger than the Parsons, wasn't she? Maybe Alice saw it more as a double adoption and looked on Anna as the daughter she never had? I don't know if it was possible in those days to officially adopt an adult - maybe a name change was the next best thing.

I wonder if the chief reason for the adoption of Roy was for inheritance purposes, on the part of both Alice and William?

I believe there was about a 5 year age difference between Alice and Anna.

Alice was unable to have children due to an unspecified health reason. I believe they came to love Roy from seeing him every day, and perhaps inheritance issues might have had something to do with it.

Anna had a recipe for squab paste that Alice and William considered valuable, so they made Anna more or less a partner in their squab-raising operation. It appears they really opened up their hearts, and home, to Anna and Roy. Alice considered her more of a companion than a housekeeper, and I think we can probably all figure out what William thought of Anna!

 

[zwiebel]

Oooh, this is interesting. a poster called David Pritchard who looks like he speaks Russian, is translating a book of noble coats of arms for someone. There is a Shishkoff there, and a Kupreyanoff. There is also just about everything you need to know about Russian Royal connections, these people are good. You don't have to register to search.

http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=3745.0

Who is going to be the brave one and ask them to drop in here and help us out? I bet they could.

 

[zwiebel]

Tiniest bit of excess sleuthing here - I just noticed one of his posts was last edited in 1969, before the invention of the internet!

 

[zwiebel]

Not reading properly, I managed to miss that Pink Panther discovered Roy was living in Richmond. Put me right, any Richmond dwellers, but I think in the twenties that was still the wealthy, middle class place it is today. So that could be more evidence that Anna was not a penniless refugee. Unless she was doing her housekeeper thing there too, and managed to find a family willing to care for Roy for a few years, when she headed for the USA.

Looks like Richmond has a very active historial society anyway, where more details might be found about Anna and Roy's England years;

http://www.richmond.gov.uk/home/leisure_and_culture/local_history_and_heritage.htm

 

[zwiebel]

I'm trying to search for records of Roy's father who was killed in the auto accident and have already lost track of who he was supposed to be. It was Soni, right? The name change to kuprianov came later?

 

[zwiebel]

Somebody feed me some squab paste. Zooming about between little London towns, NY lettuce farms and imperial Russia has got me all confused. Anna AND her four-year old son left England together in 1930? He was never left behind? Just the father, who was supposed to have been killed in an auto accident, presumably between 1926 and 1930 in Richmond, Surrey, England?

 

[fred&edna]

Somebody feed me some squab paste. Zooming about between little London towns, NY lettuce farms and imperial Russia has got me all confused. Anna AND her four-year old son left England together in 1930? He was never left behind? Just the father, who was supposed to have been killed in an auto accident, presumably between 1926 and 1930 in Richmond, Surrey, England?

Fresh out of squab paste here. And I'm the least likely to be helpful... but copying from previous posts of others:

Anna and Roy sailed from Southampton on the Mauretania, arriving in New York City on June 5, 1930. Roy was 4 years old at the time.

Roy's father might have been: Han Roy Sonirsomi
(Indian student killed in a car crash shortly before Roy's birth... I think!)

 

[Ausgirl]

Roy's father was an Indian student who was supposedly killed in a car crash in England shortly after Roy's birth in 1926. (I just dug this info out of my research files).

One article I found in my files claims that Roy's birth name was Sonirsomi, and the father was listed as Han Roy Sonirsomi. I have not been able to confirm that via any other source, so I'm not positive this info is correct.

However, Anna also claimed that Roy's father was a captain in the Russian military, and a member of the "Tsar's court". According to Anna, he met his death in the Russian Revolution. So I don't see how he could have been Roy's father.

So as you can see, it's difficult to figure out the truth when it comes to Anna.

^ Marilynilpa's research there - from what I can tell, 'Sonir' and 'Somi' are both fairly common names in India. I can't find anything on them combined to 'Sonirsomi' but that doesn't mean the name doesn't exist, of course.

That Roy was part Indian is obvious in the name he chose for his son. Roy was brought to America from England when he was four years old. So no, he wasn't left behind.

I don't think Anna was married to Roy's father - she kept the name of the husband prior to him, Kupriyanov. Or perhaps the name carried a certain prestige she wasn't willing to give up, idk.

I am pretty sure Anna either killed Alice or had some of her Russian friends do so, after she got rid of William for the day in a meeting with some other Russian pals of hers. Like I said, there's a point where 'coincidence' just doesn't cut it. I wonder what Roy saw that day, if anything.

His paintings are lovely, btw. He seems to have made a good life for himself.

 

[zwiebel]

Yes, thanks, I have checked with them.

Another helpful research tool for me was this website:

http://www.suffolkhistoricnewspapers.org/

This is a project of the Suffolk County libraries, and it is fantastic. I was able to locate articles here about Alice Parsons that weren't in the major papers. Anyone doing historic research in this area should check out this site.

Just bumping this useful post.

 

[zwiebel]

Thanks guys! I've tried just about every name combination on the graveyard search in Richmond, England, and come up with zilch for any Soni killed within five years of Roy's birth. I will try a little trawl of newspaper articles next.

To be honest though, being a single parent was such a stigma then, I do wonder if the auto accident was an invention.

 

[Ausgirl]

It may be worth giving 'Sonir' and 'Somi' a try, individually. Though, if Han was an Indian student, I'd expect his remains would likely have been taken home for the funeral.

 

[fred&edna]

I found a news article where it is reported that Anna came to work for the Parsons' through the YWCA Employment Service. Maybe there are some records associated with the YWCA during that time? Or maybe so many people used the YWCA resources it would have been impossible to keep records?

*this link looks a little nuts, I hope it works

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...GoQ8Z1&sig=AHIEtbQ0mnjCuipjFEt8wfoCVX2j7uBKyg

 

[Ausgirl]

Wow - how much would $150,000 dollars of 1937 money be worth today? ETA: one paper reported Anna got that much.. another reports 10,000. The first report states the change of will Alice made prior to her death, she left the bulk of her estate to -- Anna, the housekeeper. And her husband William got a pittance, in comparison.

In any case, she changed the will May 18 1937 and went missing June 9 the next year. No time was wasted, eh.


What the hell did Anna do to convince Alice to make that change? Was it a condition of the adoption of little Roy? Was it like a 'sale' - of the child? But why not just give Anna the money? Or leave little Roy the bulk of the estate, if he was her concern?

Change of will to benefit housekeeper - hinky. The subsequent disappearance right after - hinky. The ransom note and other letters - hinky. The husband ending up with the housekeeper - ditto.

Alice was so murdered, lured into forking out her fortune to a predatory woman using a child as bait and then horribly betrayed by people she loved. That's what I think.

 

[fred&edna]

This is a wildcard but what if his middle name was Raj not Roy? Google does bring up info about someone with this (H Raj S) name but I don't want to link erroneous / unrelated info.

 

[zwiebel]

Mmmmmm. I have tried every possible combi of Soni/Sonir/Somi etc from 1926 to the present day.

But there are still a couple of Soni families in that area - one's a criminal lawyer. Just wondering if I am looking in the wrong place now. Might Han Roy Soni have been a Hindu, with a tradition of cremation? I suspect it may have cost an awful lot to transport bodies back to India in those days, so it may be possible he was cremated in England and so there will not be any burial records.

But I don't even know if cremations took place in England in the twenties, so I am going to have to sleuth that now........