Dorothy Arnold Goes Missing
According to She’s Gone, Dorothy’s family was “considered part of New York’s high society.” Her father, Francis, a perfume importer, was a direct descendant of Mayflower passenger William Brewster. Born in July 1886, Dorothy was the second of four children and attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She hoped to pursue a writing career and submitted a short story to McClure’s, a political and literary magazine, in spring 1910. She quickly received a rejection. She’d also asked Francis to rent her an apartment in Greenwich Village so she could have a place to write, but he’d declined.
“She wasn’t happy with her family’s reaction to the rejection, because they kind of playfully mocked her,” Brunelle says. “She just felt like they didn’t take it seriously.”
Undeterred, Dorothy sent in a second piece for publication in late October. The morning of Monday, December 12, 1910, Dorothy told her mother she was going shopping for a new dress for her 18-year-old sister Marjorie’s upcoming debutante birthday party. In the next few hours, Dorothy charged a half-pound of chocolates from a high-end grocery store to her father’s account and walked 32 blocks south to a bookstore, where she reportedly purchased a collection of short stories.
Outside, Dorothy ran into a friend, who later described Dorothy as “carefree” and “in good spirits” during their conversation. Around 2 p.m., Dorothy said she planned to walk home through Central Park. She was never seen again.
Initial Investigation and Theories
When Dorothy didn’t come home, the Arnolds hired the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency, which searched for Dorothy in the United States and Europe. Though none of Dorothy’s clothes were missing from her bedroom, numerous letters with foreign postmarks and European travel brochures were found among her belongings. In her fireplace were the charred remains of what may have been a rejected manuscript.
The Arnolds learned that Dorothy had been secretly receiving letters at a post office general delivery window—primarily from an unemployed bachelor from Pittsburgh in his early 40s. His name was George Griscom Jr., and he went by “Junior.” After reading the letters, the Arnolds “realized the seriousness of Dorothy and Junior’s relationship,” Brunelle writes in She’s Gone. Just a few months earlier, Dorothy had secretly met Griscom at a Boston hotel for a five-day getaway.
The Arnolds informed the New York Police Department about the situation on December 22. Fearing Dorothy may have eloped with Griscom in Europe, Dorothy’s mother and brother traveled by boat to Florence, Italy, where Griscom was vacationing. He denied any involvement in the disappearance and said he last heard from Dorothy in a November 26 letter, in which she wrote that she received another rejection from McClure’s.
“Failure stares me in the face. All I can see is a long road with no turning,” Dorothy wrote. “Mother will always think an accident has happened.” Dorothy’s family couldn’t help but wonder whether she sought to harm herself. The Arnolds reluctantly held a press conference on January 25, 1911, offering a $1,000 reward (more than $34,000 today) for any information leading to Dorothy’s recovery.
The story quickly made front-page headlines, with Dorothy’s photo running alongside coverage in newspapers across the country. That this terrible situation could befall such a prominent family shocked readers. How could Dorothy disappear in a crowded city in broad daylight?
The press covered nearly every supposed Dorothy sighting—at a hospital in Philadelphia, a hotel in Idaho and a private home in Muskogee, Okla. A Philadelphia postal worker told reporters that a young woman came to the mailroom in mid-December and asked for a letter addressed to a Miss D. H. C. Arnold. One of Dorothy’s college friends claimed to have run into her in Italy, unaware she was missing. News outlets titled such reports “Dorothy Arnold, Again.”
Some women claimed to be Dorothy. Others who resembled Dorothy or shared her name were detained by police or hounded by the press and strangers. A man pretending to be a detective grabbed a woman in a New York City train station and dragged her toward the stairs. He told passersby the woman was Dorothy Arnold. She wasn’t.
For the Arnolds, the press coverage was “a double-edged sword” that ultimately exacerbated their suffering, according to Brunelle. They received ransom notes—believed to be fake—and even a postcard reading “I am safe,” written in a handwriting similar to Dorothy’s. Newspapers speculated that Dorothy had recently argued with her parents over a relationship with a “foreigner of excellent, if not noble family.” Journalists soon identified Griscom, and many ran with the story of a doomed love affair, which the Arnolds denied.
“I think people in general want to believe in the fairy tale, in the mystery. I think the press fed that to them,” Brunelle says. “I do think [newspapers] rooted out truth. The minute the family opened themselves up to the press, they opened themselves up to everything, because they were going to find out anything that the family was trying to hide.”
The Arnolds initially hoped to keep Dorothy and Griscom’s relationship private “because they were still investigating it themselves … By denying the relationship, though, they tarnished their own credibility.” Reports suggested the Arnolds were possibly withholding information, to which Dorothy’s father responded that the family was “hiding no skeleton in a closet.”
Griscom and his family were hounded by journalists and closely watched by detectives. After returning to New York, Griscom initially spoke with reporters and claimed he and Dorothy had been engaged. He later avoided the press.
By March 22, 1911, authorities had unsuccessfully searched multiple Central Park ponds for Dorothy’s remains, amid speculation that she may have been attacked or slipped on ice on her way home from the bookstore.
Press coverage and numerous theories persisted even after the Arnolds repeatedly said Dorothy was presumed dead. In late March 1911, the family dismissed nearly all the private detectives on the case. The family officially went into mourning the following month.
Today, Dorothy’s case remains the oldest listed in The Charley Project, a database tracking more than 16,000 missing people.
