AR AR - Pearl Turner, 3, Tate, 19 Oct 1923

[TheArtfulDetective]

Pearl Turner

Case Classification: Unknown - Lost/Injured Missing or Non-Family Abduction
Missing Since: October 19, 1923
Location Last Seen: Tate, Scott County, Arkansas

Description:

• Date of Birth: circa 1920
• Age: 3 years old
• Race: White/Caucasian
• Gender: Female
• Height: Unknown
• Weight: Unknown
• Hair Color: Light
• Eye Color: Blue
• Nickname/Alias: Pearlie
• Distinguishing Marks/Features: Scars: in front and behind right ear and a scar under left arm.
• Clothing & Personal Items: Unknown
• Identifiers: Unknown

Circumstances of Disappearance:
Pearl went missing from Tate, Arkansas on October 19, 1923. She was last seen by her sister that morning eating berries in the front yard of their family cabin. Her mother rang the dinner bell for lunch around noon but Pearl failed to arrive which was uncharacteristic of her.

An immediate search was conducted and small footprints were located on the dirt road leading towards White Oak Mountain. The tracks stopped abruptly near the woods at the base of the mountain where Pearl's handkerchief was discovered, but she was nowhere to be found.

There were allegedly multiple sightings of Pearl reported after her disappearance, but none were confirmed. The local sheriff's offices carried out door-to-door searches within the community. Search parties consisting of hundreds of people scoured the mountains and woods with the aid of dogs for several weeks. Despite the extensive searches conducted, Pearl was never located and her whereabouts remain unknown.

Investigators:

• Scott County Sheriff: (419) 637-4155
  Reference Case#: Not available

• Logan County Sheriff's Office: (479) 963-3271
  Reference Case#: Not available

NamUs Case Number: Not listed
NCIC Case Number: Not listed

Yates, Bill. Pearl: Lost Girl of White Oak Mountain. Arkansas. 2020.***
What Ever Happened to Little Pearl?
Springfield Leader and Press from Springfield, Missouri on October 24, 1923 · 11
https://www.nytimes.com/1923/10/24/...ild-groups-scour-ozarks-for-pearl-turner.html

***Permission was granted from the author for use of his publication as a source.

 

[TheArtfulDetective]

"Lynn Turner was a sharecropper. He was out cutting firewood with two of his five children, Rosa and Ruby, when little three-year-old Pearl came out to where they were working. Lynn told his two daughters to take Pearl back to the cabin so she wouldn't get hurt. Rosa and Ruby gathered up a handful of wild huckleberries and bribed Pearl to follow; she did, and the girls left her in the front yard of the cabin and went back to help their father. They left little Pearl sitting on a tree stump, eating the huckleberries.

No one would ever see her again." - "What Happened to Little Pearl Turner?"

A great re-cap of her story that Bill Yates, the author of Pearl: Lost Girl of White Oak Mountain posted, retelling an article that appeared in the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, Arkansas on February. 11, 1979, by historian Walter H. Watts.

 

[HopeRains]

St Louis Dispatch, 13 Nov 1923, pg 20 article includes additional info, including (1) she was wearing a blue print dress and was barefoot, (2) additional info regarding circumstances, (3) the exclusion of her against a young girl found who said she used to go by the name of Pearl Turner. Snip below, full article attached.

 

[HopeRains]

the exclusion of her against a young girl found who said she used to go by the name of Pearl Turner.

a different article indicated that the lady who reported the young girl was told the above by the young girl.

And then this in a 23 Nov 1923 article in The Liberal News, pg 2.