Infamous America - NEW ORLEANS Ep. 1 | “The Digby Kidnapping”

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

 In 1870, a kidnapping shocked and terrified New Orleans. For two months, the city searched for 17-month-old Mollie Digby. The case made national news and raised the tension in a city that was already on edge during the Reconstruction Era. Then the ordeal finally ended, there were more questions than answers. Check out the Jordan Harbinger show today! jordanharbinger.com/start Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like The Explorers, History of the Great War, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1870, newspapers in Louisiana were fond of printing a certain saying. It goes like this. In New Orleans, it requires three persons to start a business, one to die of yellow fever, one to get killed in a duel, and a third to wind up the business of the co-partnership. While tongue-in-cheek, the joke was certainly appropriate. New Orleans was still grappling with yellow fever, as it had for almost a hundred years.

The deadly virus thrived in the warm, humid city. Moreover, New Orleans was still a rough port city with rough people on the edge of swamps and wilderness. Dules were still a common way to settle scores among the city's elite. Sure, there were honest traders and planters and sailors and their families. Then there were vagabonds, thieves, pimps, and prostitutes. New Orleans was a haven for gamblers. Crime and violence were endemic. New Orleans was particularly on edge in 1870 because it was the height of radical reconstruction in Louisiana and the rest of the South.

African American men could now vote and serve on juries and hold public office. Against this backdrop of simmering racial tension and blurred lines of morality, someone kidnapped 17-month-old Molly Digby. She was the daughter of Irish immigrants. Soon the news came out that two biracial women had taken her. For whites, this symbolized their greatest fears. This brazen kidnapping was a sign that the antebellum social order was being overturned. Worse, news quickly spread that the little girl was about to be used for a voodoo ritual sacrifice. From BlackBarrel Media, this is Infamous America.

I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling four infamous stories from New Orleans over the next six episodes. This is episode one, the Digby Kidd Kidnapping. Molly Digby's parents, Thomas and Bridget, immigrated to America in the middle of the 19th century. They were like thousands of other Irish immigrants dwelling in New Orleans. They'd sailed with their own parents to escape the poverty caused by the Great Famine in Ireland. Thomas and Bridget married in 1860, and over the next 10 years, Bridget gave birth to four children, only three of whom survived. one of these three was one-year-old Mary Laura, better known as Molly. The Digby's lived in a working-class neighborhood near the Cypress swamps where housing was

cheap. For the most part, they lived anonymous lives. That was until June 9, 1870. That day, as late afternoon rolled around, Bridget got dinner ready. She told her two older children to go outside and play. Their neighbor, 17-year-old Rosa, offered to supervise them. Holding Molly in her arms, babysitter Rosa greeted various neighbors as they came home from work. She also kept an eye on Molly's brother, 10-year-old George. Soon, two Afro-Creol women stopped by to chat. Rosa didn't know the women well, but she knew them well enough. They'd talked before on nights just like this one. People often stopped to smile at Molly Digby. She had bright blonde hair and very blue eyes. She was a smiley good night. She was a smiley good

natured baby. People of all races socialized in the neighborhood. Unlike other parts of the South, New Orleans was unique in that regard. Its governor had just integrated its police force. Black officers now patrolled the streets. That would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. Blacks and whites intermingled in all kinds of jobs and neighborhoods, and a large portion of the city consisted of Creoles. At the time, Creole referred to an elite class that could be either black, or white or both. According to Rosa, one of the two women who stopped by to talk that day was named Martha. Rosa described Martha as about 25 years old, biracial, and very tall and attractive.

She was stylishly dressed with a spotted white dress and a white hat with a blue ribbon. Her companion was older, shorter, heavyset, and had a darker complexion. She was dressed more plainly in a calico dress and a reddish, bonnet. She didn't talk much. It's not clear if Rosa ever caught her name. Soon after they'd gathered to talk, Rosa noticed smoke. It was billowing from a storefront about two blocks away. A photography studio was on fire. Soon, a fire engine raced by, with its bell clanging and horses galloping. Crowds started to jog toward the burning structure. Caught up in the excitement, teenage Rosa wanted to watch the firemen put out the blaze.

She asked George to hold little Molly. But before she could hand her to him, Martha insisted she give Molly to her instead. Martha held out her arms. Rosa handed Molly over and thanked her for her kind offer. She also left George in the women's care. Minutes later, Molly's family would begin a terrifying ordeal. My relentless sleep problems have always come from an overactive mind. I lay in bed at night with my mind racing from one thing to another, and then, of course,

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At Mood.com, get 20% off your first order with our promo code, Infamous. Go to Mood.com and use the code infamous to get 20% off your first order. your first order, and they have a 100-day satisfaction guarantee. Mood.com promo code infamous. As Rosa left to go see the burning building, the shorter woman of the pair turned to young George Digby. She asked if he happened to know where a local seamstress lived. George said he did, so the woman asked if he could lead them to her home.

The little boy had no idea he was being used as a distraction. The woman took him by the hand while the woman called Martha cradled Molly in her arms. Together, the four of them walked a block and a half to where George thought the seamstress lived. But when they got there, the shorter woman supposedly said he was not correct. Then they led George farther away from home. When they reached a public market several blocks away, Martha handed him a little bit of money. She told him to go to the fruit stand and get some bananas for me. Molly. George hurried away, but when he returned with the fruit, the women and Molly had vanished.

George ran up and down the street looking for them, but there was no sign of the women or his baby sister. He raced home to tell his mother what had happened. She was in the kitchen when her son rushed inside and babbled the news. Bridget immediately ran out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down the block. She shouted Molly's name. Having no luck, she ran to her neighbor's house. She asked them to go find her husband and also to alert the police. As night fell, there was no sign of Molly or the two women. Over the next few days, news of Molly's disappearance began to gain traction. Interest grew when it was reported in the papers that she was last seen with a tall, fashionable mulatto woman.

The term mulatto was used in America for more than 200 years. It referred to a person who had a black parent and a white parent. In the hands of many, it was also a derisive and derogatory term that was intended to be offensive, and it has mostly fallen out of the American lexicon today. In those hot and humid days in the middle of June 1870, white parents in elite garden district mansions and townhouses in the French Quarter were terrified. They often relied on African-American women to be nannies for their children. The idea that one of these sitters might steal one of their children for ransom,

caused an outright panic. The plight of Molly's parents gained even more traction when Thomas Digby cobbled together $500 for a reward, which was a huge sum at the time. The newspapers did all they could to promote the story,

and not just out of a desire to see Molly return to her parents. For weeks on end, almost every paper in and around New Orleans libelled its biracial police force. They wrote that African-American detectives could not possibly solve the case. They added that the detectives probably knew where Molly was,

but were protecting her black kidnappers. As weeks went by with no news, the papers ran out of new details to print. So they printed a rumor from Molly's neighborhood. The baby, they said, had been abducted for use as a human sacrifice in a voodoo ritual. Many people in New Orleans still feared the alleged powers of high priestess Marie LeVoe

and her daughter. They were both still alive and had a huge following. People spread rumors about their black neighbors, wondering if they had something to do with taking Molly. As the Digby hysteria grew, society women from the city's prominent white groups petitioned Governor Henry Wormouth to offer a reward for Molly's return. The governor desperately wanted to prove that his police force was up to the task of finding her. So, he offered $1,000 for Molly's safe return, and the arrest and conviction of her kidnappers. The governor pressured the chief of police to pick a detective who could come up with a strategy.

That detective was 40-year-old John Baptiste or Jordane. Jordane was extremely skilled, having learned groundbreaking investigative techniques that originated in France. But that wasn't the only reason the chief of police picked him for the job. Like the suspects who supposedly took Molly, he was Afro-Creol. The chief's rationale was that if a black detective found the baby or her abductors,

it might help calm the white community. Maybe it would help with the common opinion that a black policeman couldn't or wouldn't solve or punish the crimes committed by blacks against whites. Jordane's desire to accomplish the feat, coupled with the reward money, would become the driving force in the investigation. Jordane's first order of business was to have all of his patrolmen look closely at any biracial women they came across. If the women remotely fit the description of the kidnappers, they were to bring them in for questioning. Also, if the officers found any women who were black and happened to be

named Martha, they would bring them in too. It didn't matter whether or not they fit the description. And officers were ordered to detain any black nursemaids who had white children in their care. Last but not least, officers were ordered to arrest at least a dozen of the more prominent voodoo practitioners in New Orleans, and maybe even some who weren't all that prominent. It's not clear whether or not law enforcement really believed Mali was going to be used in a human sacrifice. Regardless, the police wanted to calm the fears of so many citizens. Five weeks went by, but the police failed to find any real suspects or leads. The newspapers only escalated their attacks on the force. Worse, they started to suggest that perhaps citizens should take matters into their own hands and create vigilante groups.

Black communities were terrified. In 19th century America, vigilante organizations were notorious for using justice as an excuse to terrorize African Americans. Businesses started to add money to the bounty. By the middle of July, the sum grew to the money. an amount that is equivalent of $15,000 in today's money. And because of the large reward, news of the kidnapping spread beyond the Gulf region. On July 21st, the New York Times reported on it. Molly Digby's plight was now national news, which meant even more tips came pouring in.

Anytime someone saw a white child in the company of a black woman or women, the person called the New Orleans police. No matter how far-fetched a tip sounded, Jordane and his men were obligated to follow it up. On Sunday, August 7th, Police Commissioner William George received a tip. It was from someone who said they thought they had seen a white baby fitting Molly's description. The person saw her at a house belonging to a woman named Ellen Fallon. She and her sister Louisa Murray ran what was called a lying-in hospital. It was a place where pregnant and unmarried women,

could go to carry their babies and avoid gossip. But William George decided not to tell Detective Jordane. If George followed up and found the baby, he could collect the reward money for himself. Though it sounds outrageous now, there was no ordinance at the time against members of long enforcement collecting rewards if they successfully fulfilled a mission.

So, in mid-afternoon, George rode out to the address on the outskirts of the city. When he called from a locked gate for someone to come out, a biracial woman emerged along with a 17-year-old boy. George asked her if there was a white child on the premises. As soon as he did, he regretted not telling Jordane about his plans. The woman perfectly fit the description of one of the alleged kidnappers, but he couldn't enter the premises without a warrant.

If the woman had Molly and George had to ride back into town to get a warrant, the delay would give her plenty of time to spirit the little girl away. George swallowed his pride and followed the law. He raced off to get Detective Jordane. Jordane and a bunch of policemen returned to the house three hours later. He realized that the teenage boy was nowhere to be seen, and he had a feeling that the boy might be in the process of moving Molly Digby. Although Jordane threatened Ellen Fallon,

she reassured him that she knew nothing about D. Digby. Jordane searched the house, but found no evidence that Molly had been there. The detective had no choice but to leave. By that time, the detective was monitoring several other manhunts, some of them hundreds of miles away, and he needed to follow up on other leads. And then two days later, at 6 a.m. at Thomas and Bridget Digby's house, there was a knock on the door. A stout, elderly white man told him, I think I have your child. The man asked if they'd be willing to go back to his home in the fourth district to claim baby Molly. Thomas Digby was exhausted, but he told his wife he would go.

There had been so many false alarms over the past two months, it was impossible to know if this was real or a hoax or simply a mistake. During those two months, Bridget had had a series of breakdowns. Each time a supposed finding turned out to be false, Bridget suffered a little more. If this one was false, Thomas feared it would push her over the edge. The digbees didn't realize it, but the man on their doorstep was fairly well known around New Orleans. He was a former ship captain, and he was wealthy. Thomas grabbed their family dog in the hopes that if it was Molly, the animal and the child would recognize each other.

When they arrived at the man's house, the captain's wife held out a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby to Thomas. The baby was crying and had two large boils on her face. In what was certainly the most bizarre part of the case, Thomas Digby wasn't sure if the baby was Molly. Do you not know your own child, the woman asked. There's never been a good explanation for why Thomas questioned his daughter's identity. It could have been that the stress of the ordeal had finally caught up with them. Maybe they just had too many false positive sightings,

and now he questioned his own sanity. Perplexed, the captain suggested he put the dog near the baby and see what happened. The animal didn't seem interested one way or the other. Finally, the wife suggested Thomas take the girl home and show Bridget. Thomas did, and both mother and child immediately recognized each other. Hundreds of friends and strangers flock to the Digby House to be part of the joyful reunion. Naturally, Detective Jordane and his bosses wanted to know who brought Molly home. It never occurred to Thomas Digby to ask the name of the prominent gentleman who had made this possible.

So he led law enforcement back to the house in the 4th District. The captain wasn't home, but when Detective Jordane confronted the wife, she seemed confused. She reminded him that all of the advertisements in the newspapers said there would be no questions asked. Jordane's boss, Commissioner George, got angry. This kidnapping had brought such bad publicity to the police department that he was determined to get answers. He pressured her until she told him how Molly came to be in their possession. It seemed that a friend's teenage boy had come to their house the day before.

He told them to come to his mother's house in the 6th District. When they arrived, the mother told them that a mysterious white woman with a veil over her face had dropped the baby off at their gate. She didn't know what else to do but care for it. She didn't want to turn the baby in herself because she was black and she didn't want to be blamed for the kidnapping. The captain and his wife said it was no problem. They would handle it.

As Commissioner George heard the story, he immediately suspected the woman with a 17-year-old son whom he'd visited two days earlier. George demanded the wife take them to the home of the woman who gave her the baby. Detective Jordane, Commissioner George, and others descended upon Ellen Fallon's home. They interrogated everyone in it. Fallon admitted she'd had the child and repeated the same excuses that the captain's wife had said.

Fallon was scared to say anything because she didn't want to be unfairly blamed for the kidnapping. When her son was interrogated, he told a different story. He said Molly had been there for three weeks, not just one, Two days earlier, his mother instructed him to hide her when the police came, which he did. And a pregnant woman who was living at the house agreed with everything Fallon's son said. Jordane arrested Fallon, and he also arrested her teenage son as an accomplice. On August 10, 1870, Detective Jordane arrived in Mobile, Alabama, and took Ellen Fallon's sister Louisa Murray with him back to New Orleans for questioning. Detective soon figured out that she had been in New Orleans on the day of Molly's kidnapping,

and she resembled the beautiful, stylish woman whom babysitter Rosa Garman had recalled two months earlier. The next day, Ellen, Ellen's son, and Louisa Murray were arraigned for the kidnapping of Molly Digby. The captain and his wife retained a lawyer for their friend Ellen Fallon and her son, but not before a reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune got to them. Fallon stuck to her story and kept her composure, but reporters easily manipulated her son and other members of the family elsewhere. Unfortunately, they all gave conflicting accounts. Everyone had different memories of when and how little Molly Digby came to be in the home of Ellen Fallon,

and possibly in the Alabama home of her sister Louisa Murray. During the trial that followed, there were lots of racial nuances and ironies in the prosecution's case. All of them are discussed in-depth by author Michael A. Ross, who has written the only book about the case. Very simply put, it was a hell of a trial. Everyone in New Orleans seemed to have a stake in it. The elite wanted the women convicted in order to show that reconstruction was a failure. Same with the district attorney who prosecuted them. Detective Jordane and his bosses all the way up to the governor wanted them to be found guilty

so society would know that the police force investigated people of color just as vigorously as white people. But a good part of the city and the nation made it clear that convicting the women would be appalling. They were respectable, hardworking citizens who had no reason to kidnap a little girl. And some less conservative newspapers had fun pointing out that for all the talk of voodoo in rival publications, this was clearly not a supernatural case. But as the talk swirled and circled back on itself, there were still two questions on everyone's mind. Who actually kidnapped Molly Digby and why? The New Orleans Police Department, and by extension Commissioner George and Detective Jordane, had a problem.

Even if they could somehow prove that Ellen Fallon and Louisa Murray kidnapped Molly without the help of a mysterious white woman in a veil, they had no motive. The department leaked their theory to the press. The detectives had gone back to interview Minnie Green, the pregnant woman who had been living at the fallen home. It turned out that before her most recent pregnancy, Green had lost both her husband and her two-year-old daughter. She'd kept the loss of her child a secret because she hoped to receive $50,000 from her husband's father

to use for raising the child. But to get the money, she obviously needed a child. and one who was roughly the same age as the daughter she'd lost. So, she enlisted the sisters to help her kidnap Molly, and she would give them some of the money. To some extent, the theory sounded possible and even plausible. But the prosecution couldn't produce any testimony or documents to support Minnie Green's story.

Worse, babysitter Rosa Garman reiterated that neither Ellen Fallon nor Louisa Murray looked like the women to whom she'd handed Molly. And neighbors who were called as witnesses flat out rejected the notion that they were the women who'd been seen that day. The trial dragged on for five months, partially because of breaks for a few weeks because of a spike in the yearly yellow fever epidemic.

The trial ended in late January, 1871. In the end, it only took eight minutes for the jury to reach a decision. Notably, the jury was comprised of 10 whites and two Afro-Creeals, and it found Ellen Fallon, her son, and Louisa Murray not guilty. They were free to resume their lives. As enthralled as the nation was by the kidnapping and the trial, the story didn't take long to fall off the national news. The governor was ousted by another faction of the Republican Party. With the official end to reconstruction in 1877, Southern Democrats immediately removed New Orleans

Chief of Police and all persons of color from the force. Detective Jordane shouldered much of the blame for the women going free, and he was demoted. He eventually left the force to participate in the complicated politics of New Orleans as it fell firmly under the Jim Crow laws. 18 years later, Jordane took his own life. Fallen and Louisa Murray, as well as the Digby family, spent the rest of their lives out of the spotlight. Because of the notoriety of the trial, Ellen had to give up her boarding house for pregnant women. She changed her name and made her living as a seamstress. In spite of modern genealogical recordkeeping, no one knows what happened to Louisa Murray. As for Molly, she eventually married

and had a family of her own in New Orleans. She was largely forgotten until the next generation's most infamous kidnapping happened in 1932. That was the abduction of Charles Lindbergh's baby. The Lindberg case sparked interest in notorious kidnappings from the past. An intrepid New Orleans reporter tracked down the then-62-year-old Molly Digby, and she was happy to tell her story. And Molly had done some sleuthing of her own

since she obviously had no memory of the event. She interviewed family and friends and tracked down others involved in her case. She planned to sell her story to Hollywood, but never did, though she did develop her own theory about the kidnapping. According to Molly, the mastermind behind her kidnapping

was none other than the captain and his wife, the people who returned her to her family and so vigorously defended their friend Ellen Fallon. In Molly's account, the captain fell in love with his wife who was much younger, and when he proposed marriage, her father objected. The couple eloped to New Orleans. In response, his wife's parents cut her out of their will.

When they had a child, the young mother's parents softened a bit, and the father sent a letter that said her inheritance had been restored. Predictably, in the story, the baby died. The poor grief-stricken couple had lost their child, and most likely the restored inheritance. Supposedly, they employed a nanny who regularly socialized with a woman who babysat for Mrs. Digby. The nanny and the babysitter realized that Molly was similar at age and description to the lost child of the captain and his wife. That information filtered back to the captain's wife.

And then the plot thickened even more. Ellen Fallon was the former mistress of the captain. They remained friendly, and he enlisted her and her sister to abduct Molly in the hopes of getting the reward money upon her return. But no one expected the publicity that Molly's kidnapping received. The plan went sideways when too many people sent in stories that needed to be investigated, and the couple couldn't simply return her as planned. Molly's theory can't be substantiated, and some of it can even be proven wrong. But it does provide an interesting news.

way to look at the story. Her written account remains in the possession of her descendants and is unpublished as yet. Next time on Infamous America, we move forward to the 1890s to begin the story of a murdered police chief and the vigilante retaliation that followed. It's part one of a two-part story about one of the darkest chapters in New Orleans history. That's next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships began to just $5 per month.

The primary source for this episode was The Great New Orleans Kidnapping, Race, Law, and the Reconstruction Era by Michael Ross. Check out the book for the full story of the Digby Kidnapping Case. Research in Writing by Julia Brickland. Original music by Rob Valier. copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube.

Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.