Recent content by Bluejay_Young

According to Elizabeth's mother the child is safe. *modsnip/please do not link or quote any private sm if not missing person or named POI as against TOS*

When I wrote that, I didn't know about the rest of the children. Then I found out about them and put them in the Wikipedia article. They were brought to my attention by "Dogmama08" from Find-a-Grave.

Thank you. I have submitted this to Findagrave so it'll appear on her listing. I wonder if Jaromír Pšenka wrote that. The money for such a large, expensive stone may have come from the contributions that poured in, or maybe from Pšenka himself.

"Tent Girl" was identified as Barbara Hackmann Taylor. She was much older and that was in 1967-68. The one we're talking about here is Little Miss 1565/possibly Eleanor Emily Cook, from the Hartford, CT Ringling Bros - Barnum & Bailey Circus fire July 6, 1944.

According to Fire Chief Huertas the photo Pond burned was just a copy. All the original pictures of Little Miss 1565 are safe. His statement is given here (with the actual picture included) and there are follow-up articles. There's just a little bit of a problem with this story. I've been...

http://image2.findagrave.com/photos/2013/229/19844142_137683446302.jpg Contributed by cemetery photographer Elliott Mason. I'd have posted the actual picture here, but it's pretty big and I'm not sure of the rules on larger size images. I don't read Czech, but I puzzled it out with Google...

Not Fish's M.O., not his style, nothing about this suggests Fish at all. Boy, would I love to see a DNA reading on that clothing.

I finally managed to acquire several articles on Elsie from the Chicago Daily News, April and May 1911. I am not sure I have every article but there are plenty of details in these microfilm prints. The Elsie Paroubek article on Wikipedia now reflects what is in those articles for the most part...

The reason I wonder about the organ grinder is actually something from A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, which is closely based on Betty Smith's real life. In chapter 13, Francie along with other children follow street musicians and Mary warns her children to stay away from Sicilian ones. She says...

Children are stolen by people other than sexual predators / murderers. I always forget about black market adoptions too, but they were common at that time. Georgia Tann didn't start her illegal adoption industry until a few years after Catherine disappeared, but Georgia was not the first person...

Thanks! When I was writing the Elsie article for Wikipedia, I used Google street views to look for the house. I "walked" around the neighborhood for a bit. I still want to see if I can get permission to use a picture of the house and a map showing Elsie's route to her aunt's place.

Sexual predators usually have some kind of a pattern. This was definitely known about in those days, there were some very famous cases in Victorian times. Police would have looked for those type of leads. There are details of this story strikingly similar to Elsie Paroubek's. Elsie was on her...

Drugs were part of Barbara's problem. According to her letters, she used prescription sleeping pills, probably Seconals, which she called "dope". Except on rare occasions, she could not get to sleep without them, and may have been addicted. Looks like she drank alcohol to enhance their effect...

Not Fish's M.O., not his style, nothing about this suggests Fish at all. I admit it's a wild guess on my part, based on the fact that he died on the anniversary of Elsie's funeral. I was thinking about the fact that he was getting those anonymous threatening letters, and the futility of...

I am deeply indebted to "Dogmama08" from Find-a-Grave, who located and passed on to me the information about Elsie's parents, their names, birth places and death dates. Elsie's mother was born Karolina Vojacek on November 26, 1869, in Mícov (Meconi), East Bohemia, in what is now the Czech...