Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Kidnapping of Charley Ross

Starting point is 00:00:00 Most children growing up are admonished not to take candy from strangers. It's good advice, but it isn't advice that comes from nowhere. It actually came from a particular incident over 150 years ago that shocked the world and changed how we view children's safety. It was an event, the echoes of which can be seen today in efforts to find abducted children. Learn more about the kidnapping of Charlie Ross on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? Throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:00:51 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The kidnapping of a child is an event that occurs infrequently, but when it does happen, it gains a great deal of attention. Every so often in the news, you'll hear terrible reports of children who go missing, and in some cases, their unsolved investment. investigations that can last for years. The case of Charles Limburg Jr., of which I've done a previous episode, was probably the highest profile case in American history. However, when that case hit the

Starting point is 00:01:26 headlines, it always referenced another case which came before it. The first major case of a child kidnapping, the case which brought the issue to the public's attention, occurred over 150 years ago in the city of Philadelphia. It occurred in 1874 in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Germantown was one of the nicer areas of the city, and the people who lived there were amongst some of the upper crust of Philadelphia society. The Ross family was one such family in Germantown. Christian Ross and his wife lived in Germantown with their seven children. Stroughton, Harry, Sophia, Walter, Charlie, Marion, and Annie. The two youngest boys, Walter and Charlie, were six and four years old respectively, and were constant playmates. On June 27, 1874, the two boys were playing out.

Starting point is 00:02:14 outside their home when two men in a carriage pulled up. They began talking to the two boys, offered them candy, and left without incident. The two men appeared each day for the next several days, talking to the boys, giving them some candy, and leaving without incident. On July 1st, the men showed up again in a buggy and talked to the boys. This time, however, having built up a rapport with them over several days, they invited them to come with them to get fireworks and candy. The two boys entered the carriage and were taken to a store. Walter, the older of the two, was given 25 cents and told to go into the store to buy fireworks while Charlie and the two men waited outside. Walter went into the store, but when he returned, his brother and the two men were gone.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Walter panicked and started to cry. He eventually got the attention of a stranger named Henry Peacock, who took him home to his father. His father immediately suspected what had happened. He asked their neighbors if they saw anything. Several people were. of them saw the boys get into the carriage, but no one saw them drop off Walter at the store and leave with Charlie. Charlie's mother was in Atlantic City recovering from an illness, but she soon found out what happened when she read the advertisements her husband put in local newspapers for their son's return. There was immediate speculation on who might have taken young Charlie. Some figured a relative took the boy due to a family squabble. Others blamed gypsies, and still others

Starting point is 00:03:36 pointed the figure at Charlie's father, who figured it was a way to get attention. On July 3rd, a ransom letter arrived at the Ross home. It had been mailed from Philadelphia. The letter was filled with misspellings and grammatical errors. It read, quote, Mr. Raz, be not uneasy, your son, Charlie, be all writ. We has got him and no powers on earth can deliver out of our hand. You will have to pay us before you get him from us, and pay us a big sent too. If you put the cops hunting for him, you is only defeating you own end. We has got him put so no living power can get him from us alive. If any approach is made to his hiding place, that is a signal for his instant annihilation. If you regard his lift, put no one to search for him,

Starting point is 00:04:23 you money can fetch him out alive and no other existent powers. Don't deceive yourself and think that detectives can get him from us, for that is impossible. You hear from us infuse you. You hear from us in few days." End quote. And I tried to read that as accurately as I could, given the spelling. The police in Philadelphia and the surrounding area began a manhunt to find Charlie. They went door to door and searched houses, usually without a warrant. People who objected were put under suspicion. They searched boats going in and out of Philadelphia, and found a lot of stolen property, but not the boy. Families in the area kept their kids locked up inside to protect them. Several prominent Philadelphia citizens even recruited the Pinkerton Detective Agency to help find the boy.

Starting point is 00:05:07 On July 6th, another letter arrived. This one requested that the family pay $20,000 for the boy's return, the equivalent of $400,000 today. The problem was the kidnappers totally misjudged the Ross family. While they did have a nice house and a nice part of town, and Mr. Ross owned a general goods store, he was heavily in debt, having lost money in the stock market. He didn't have $20,000 on hand. The kidnappers told Mr. Ross that if you wanted to communicate, he was to place a classified ad in the Philadelphia telegram with the following, quote, Rouse, we are ready to negotiate, end quote.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Over the course of the next several weeks, Christian Ross and the kidnappers continued to communicate in this fashion. Ross was encouraged by the police to keep stringing the kidnappers along to hopefully get some information that could be used to capture them. In total, 23 letters were sent by the kidnappers. There was one elaborate request for delivering the money which involved painting a suitcase white, sitting on the back of a train, and waiting for a signal along the tracks. Mr. Ross took the train trip, but never saw the signal. The kidnappers read a newspaper article that published some erroneous information and canceled the deal.

Starting point is 00:06:17 Eventually, communications with the kidnappers ceased. The last letter was sent from New York. In the meantime, Little Charlie had become a cause-celeb. There was a popular song written called Bring Back Our Little Darling. and newspapers couldn't get enough of the story. The story eventually cooled off as there were no new updates. Charlie was still missing, and the police had no clues. In August, the New York City police had a possible lead in the case,

Starting point is 00:06:42 and requested to see the ransom letters to compare the handwriting. An informant had come forward to the police to testify that he was approached by two men in April about a plot to kidnap a child from the Vanderbilt family and hold it for $50,000 ransom. The informant provided detailed descriptions of the two men's faces, which were corroborated by Charlie's brother Walter who had seen them. The two men were William Mosher and Joseph Douglas. Mosher had a criminal record and was actually a fugitive at the time of the kidnapping. Both men had been

Starting point is 00:07:12 living in Philadelphia, not that far away from the Ross home, and both had left to live in New York around the time when the ransom messages began to be sent from New York. Many neighbors in Philadelphia also reported seeing a carriage similar to the one which picked up Walter and Charlie at Mosher's house. The police and the Pinkertons began to look for the two men, but they couldn't be found. The search for Mosher and Douglas ended on December 13th, when the home of the New York Supreme Court Justice, Charles Van Brunt, was robbed. The men robbing the home were still on the premises when an alarm bell was sounded, alerting Justice Van Brun's brother who lived next door. He assembled a small group of armed men and confronted the robbers shooting both of them. The two men were William Mosher and Joseph Douglas.

Starting point is 00:07:55 Mosher was killed instantly, and Douglas was shot and mortally wounded. Knowing that his death was near, Joseph Douglas made a confession. He reportedly said, quote, Men, I won't lie to you. My name is Joseph Douglas, and the man over there is William Mosher. He lives in New York, and I have no home. I am a single man and have no relatives except a brother and a sister, whom I have not seen him for 12 years. Mosher is married and has four children. I have $40 in my pocket that I made honestly.

Starting point is 00:08:25 bury me with that. Also, men, I am dying now and it's no use lying. Masha and I stole Charlie Ross. End quote. Charlie's brother Walter had identified one of the kidnappers with a distinctive facial feature that was never released to the public. He told the police that he had, quote, a monkey nose. Walter was brought to identify the two dead men and confirmed that they were the ones that picked up him and his brother. Mosher had a deformed nose. His body was also identified by one of the two dead men. He was also identified by one of the two dead men and confirmed men and confirmed. He said, and confirmed he was of their neighbors who saw the boys go into the carriage. There was another associate of Mosher and Douglas named William Westervelt, who was a police officer in Philadelphia. He was actually tried for the kidnapping, but there was no evidence to link him to the crime. Even though the crime was seemingly wrapped up, there was still the

Starting point is 00:09:11 issue of where little Charlie was. With both of the kidnappers now dead, there was no way to find out where Charlie was located. When Douglas gave his confession, he said that Mosher was the only one who knew the location of the boy. No one knew if Charlie was dead or alive. Charlie Ross was never found, and what happened to him remains a mystery to this day, over 150 years after he was taken. The kidnapping of Charlie Ross was the first kidnapping for ransom in American history. There had been previous child kidnapping cases, but in those cases, the kidnapper only intended to collect the reward money. In February 1875, the Pennsylvania legislature passed the first kidnapping law in the country.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Charlie's mother and father spent the rest of their lives looking for their son. His father wrote a book and gave lectures just to raise money to continue the search. His father passed away in 1897 and his mother in 1912. They talked to 570 men who claimed to have been Charlie. For over 60 years after the disappearance of Charlie Ross, people came forward who claimed that they were him. The most notable case was that of a 74-year-old man named Gustav Blair, who had a court in Arizona legally declare him to be Charlie Ross in 1939. The surviving family members refused to contest it, having dealt with thousands of other

Starting point is 00:10:32 claimants over the decades. Later, DNA tests confirmed that there was no way he could have been Charlie Ross. The legacy of the kidnapping of Charlie Ross endures to this day. The admonition of Don't Take Candy from strangers comes directly from the Charlie Ross incident. Today, most people have no idea who Charlie Ross was, but child abductions are still a major concern. In the 80s and 90s, photos of missing children were put on milk cartons. It was replaced by the Amber Alert System, which is a network that uses broadcast media and text messages to alert people when children go missing. And the global missing children's network is an international

Starting point is 00:11:07 system to disseminate information on missing children. While there were other high-profile abduction cases that brought these modern programs into existence, it was the kidnapping of four-year-old Charlie Ross in 1874 that first brought the issue to the attention of the public. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at Patreon.com. I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers.

Starting point is 00:11:44 Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Kidnapping of Charley Ross

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