The Impossible Disappearance Of Dorothy Arnold

[Music] this week on a special episode of buzzfeed unsolved we investigate the unexplained disappearance of new york heiress dorothy arnold in honor of the upcoming cw show nancy drew the cw's new series nancy drew wednesdays this fall is a dark and edgy update of the classic book series featuring the titular teen detective in a supernatural tinged mystery drama what's dorothy got to do with old nance in the show nancy drew is tasked with finding uh a missing social light so i'd love to be an heiress i know she's probably gonna disappear or something so you want to be a trust fund baby i'd like someone to give me a lot of money for doing nothing and then you want to disappear but i want yes i want to get a lot of money and then vanish from the face of the earth and i'd love for you to disappear let's get into it yeah tales of the missing wealthy have always captivated the public's imagination and today we're looking into one such case that's more than a hundred years old dorothy arnold dorothy harriet camille arnold was the daughter of mary parks arnold and wealthy perfume importer francis rose arnold as far as anybody knew she'd had a happy home life cool to be a perfume importer i'd love to be that what would your fragrance be what would the name be um it'd be musky i know that okay for a second i thought your fragrance name was going to be just a chick monk like chipmunk noise could you imagine if someone said oh that's a lovely scent what is that okay we'll see you later on the morning of december 12 1910 the 25 year old left her family home in the upper east side of manhattan and told her mother she was heading downtown to buy an evening dress according to the new york times when mrs arnold offered to accompany her daughter dorothy said no quote when i find the gown i want i will telephone you and you can come down and see it end quote i'll tell you what she sounds like an heiress pretty curt yeah with your mother how about when i find the gown i want maybe i'll talk to you then how about when i need the funds i'll call you how about that yeah how often do you think this lady's buying gowns i mean if she's buying an evening gown you would assume she's buying an afternoon gown and a morning gown maybe even a sleepy time count that's right her family believed that when she left at 11 30 a.m she had as much as 30 in her purse which in today's dollars would be more than 750 dollars holy moly that's a lot of quiche yeah a lot of quiche 30 bucks going that far in 1910 i don't even have 750 in my bank account i've never had 750 in my pocket i rarely have had 30 dollars in my pocket well i don't really carry cash anymore who does dorothy made her way down fifth avenue stopping at a grocery store on 59th street to buy some chocolates then at brentano's a bookstore on 27th street where she bought a copy of engaged girl sketches a lightly humorous collection of short romantic stories well this sounds like quite a lovely evening for the lit for the for the ladies a nice little jaunt through the big apple yeah yeah i love a humorous romantic story well this story does not get humorous nor does it get romantic okay around that time reportedly 2pm she ran into a friend from college gladys king the two talked about a party they'd both been invited to the same party for which dorothy was supposedly dress shopping gladys left to meet her mother for lunch and dorothy was never seen again whoa there it comes so the last person to see here was gladys they were talking about the big party they've been invited oh it's going to be a corker kind of like gossip girly i guess what is a little gossip like in the 1910s yeah yeah yeah they should do a reboot oh in that in that era yeah let's talk about more shows people should watch that aren't the one where so what we're establishing here is that we got our finger on the pulse of hot searing teen dramas i don't like how you said that and uh this one's gonna be pretty good teen should never be prefaced by hot and searing you're just going to have you going hot searing teens and then just cut right there well that sounds good i'd like to watch oh now they have footage of me saying that yeah not a guy you two you're gonna have both the unsolved hosts talking about hot searing teens i guess at this point we might as well say it in unison ah siri tease when dorothy wasn't home for dinner that night her family started to worry the next morning they began calling dorothy's friends by that evening with no one knowing dorothy's whereabouts the family began contacting private investigators the investigators searched hospitals morgues and even prisons looking for dorothy they'd visited her friends in boston washington dc and other cities but turned up nothing detectives in europe even watched as people disembarked from ships arriving from the us to try to spot dorothy nothing shortly before christmas with the private dicks having made little progress the family went to the police when they too came up empty-handed the family finally made dorothy's disappearance public on january 25th a full six weeks after their daughter was last seen hoping more clues would surface despite a one thousand dollar reward by dorothy's family more than twenty six thousand dollars today no leads managed to turn up dorothy arnold that's a long time i know they had the private eyes working on it but six weeks feels like a casual pace what are you going to do i mean it she was 25 years old she could have run away maybe when a 25 year old goes missing you're not thinking she must have run away you're thinking yeah she's probably doing stuff because she's 25 years old what do you mean by stuff i mean when we started this show i was 25. yeah if i went missing for like a week do you think you'd be alarmed or would you rather think so that's that's nice i didn't think you'd be alarmed i think you you're my friend i don't like how you said that you said it you're my friend why are you yelling i me you're my friend you're my friend god i would be concerned if you disappeared and we'd get a pretty baller season out of it because it'd just be me being like i don't know what do you got anybody seen him with almost no clues it's time to make like nancy drew and nancy draw up some theories about what may have happened to the popular socialite because it captured america's attention for so long this case has countless theories associated with it we couldn't possibly go into all of them so today we're just presenting what i feel are the most likely our first theory is that dorothy arnold ran away after searching her bedroom investigators found information dorothy had collected about various ocean liners she could take to europe it wasn't clear when dorothy researched the ships but the cruise companies were nevertheless contacted they all told investigators no dorothy arnold had been aboard their ships in my 20s it would have been very suspect if i disappeared because i was for a brief while very interested in uh mcmurdo the antarctic uh research base that's where you wanted to go in your mid-20s you wanted to go to antarctica it's really cool looking it's there's a lot of ice you wanted to go to a frozen tundra for vacation not just vacation but i don't i wanted to learn things and and just live there maybe i still can you're a weird guy man you wouldn't do that you're a weird dude no i wouldn't do that when i think oh well you're just like cabo baby no i'm not thinking cabo i don't know what that is on february 6 1911 mr arnold received a postcard that had been sent from new york city that stated quote i am safe end quote and appeared to be signed by dorothy mr arnold however insisted it was a fake and that whoever wrote it merely copied dorothy's handwriting samples that were published in the papers i'd love for this theory to be true i would agree dorothy if you're watching this you're probably 127 years old oh old lady but um you know good on you you lived a good life hey the good boys finally got to me jesus christ dorothy if you're watching this comment top we'll vote we'll get to the top comment wouldn't that be this show's greatest accomplishment that we pissed off uh vanished so much that they unvanished themselves after they you know they got so angry yeah that they came out like if stevie cooper was like you [ __ ] listen i saw what you said about me getting speared by a pine tree d.b cooper breaks silence db cooper breaks silence to dunk on ghoul boys while riding the new york subway in 1917 john galvin a man claiming to be a detective at scotland yard grabbed a woman and reportedly declared quote i know you dorothy arnold i've got you at last end quote the woman not dorothy arnold but rather a mrs smith begged strangers around her to help but galvin insisted he was a detective he marched her into an nypd precinct where officers let mrs smith go and sent gelvin to bellevue hospital for observation i know you dorothy arnold come with me i've got you at last another case cracked for galvin imagine being on the subway maybe you have your air pods in and some grown man grabs you by the shoulders looks you in your eyes and shakes you and goes i've got you probably happens a lot in new york i'm guessing probably true you know the subway and such but it's a wild place not only did he grab her it's not like this was a moment of terror just a moment he marched he station made her get off the subway walked with her i'm assuming while holding her shoulders still that's insane imagine the people at the precinct too they this man shows up and he's like it's the missing lady we've got her at last ma'am do you have any id she takes it out and they're like why don't we get this guy somewhere quickly that is padded i've cracked it here she is dorothy give me the money now over the following decades many others would come forward claiming to have seen dorothy or even to be dorothy none of the claims ever led anywhere casting doubt on the theory that dorothy ran away is the fact that she left behind practically all of her valuables expensive jewelry that could have been sold to help her journey as well as personally valuable correspondence with friends so let's say i look like kim kardashian and because you do yeah and she goes missing and i and she's not turning up and i just really pour through the archives get a good idea of what she's like yeah you watch 10 seasons of keeping up with the kardashians watch it all take copious notes i watch it on loop for 10 years i show up a little aged yeah but still you know i've still got it you know i've still got what she's got yeah because i sort of look like her and i just show up and it's like oh it's me kim it's been a long time i feel i took i fell down a hole i have a beard now i got stuck in a cave and you just make up a story how like what are they gonna know how could they possibly tell well they could be like where's that mole on your butt cheek i mean they don't know that no i mean i i guess you're right so guess what suddenly i'm rolling in it baby and there's going to be 10 more seasons that keep keeping up with the kardashians under the ran away theory we should talk about a sub theory of sorts that dorothy eloped when police were brought on the case their first theory was that dorothy had eloped by the time the new york times broke the story however that theory quote had been completely abandoned end quote after investigators interviewed everyone they were sure knew dorothy in any way every one of dorothy's family members and every friend they could get the name of no one was aware of any secret marriage but before investigators gave up on the elopement theory one potential suitor merited extra attention george griscom jr george griscom jr was a pennsylvanian man in his 40s at the time of dorothy's disappearance the two had known one another for approximately four years though dorothy's family never approved of george mrs arnold even went on record to say she would never let george marry her daughter after she went missing it came out that dorothy had met up with george in boston a couple months before she disappeared she had told her family she was visiting a college friend but there was evidence that dorothy checked out of her hotel at the same time that george had checked out of a different boston hotel reports say that dorothy may have also pawned some of her jewelry to fund their rendezvous while the arnold's denied this a boston pawn shop was given the name dorothy arnold by someone while she was in boston at the time dorothy went missing however george had been vacationing with his family out of the country for about a month even after replying to a telegram from the arnold's that he didn't know where she was the family remained suspicious on january 16th before the public even knew about dorothy's disappearance dorothy's older brother john confronted george in florence italy during this interaction reports suggested john even hit george and knocked him to the ground in february george ended his trip early and sailed back to america he then hired his own private investigators to look for dorothy in the month that george paid for them his investigators didn't find dorothy either so if i'm george you are george yes i'm not george but if i'm george okay you're a creep george i'm a creep i'm a creep yeah i want to marry this heiress i pay for her to go stay somewhere for a little bit but if we want to elope when's the perfect time to do it to make myself not look suspicious when i'm on vacation for a month with my family so she goes holes up somewhere for a little bit yeah family comes knocking at my door she's listening where's she been i don't know i'm on vacation then i hire a private eye you forgot the part where they gave him a knuckle sandwich whatever they hit me big deal i'm getting married i'm stoked hi or a private eye he runs around town looking for i don't tip him off maybe i tell him like hey by the way this is all [ __ ] i don't know oh here's extra money don't tell him well i don't know how much honor gum shoes had at that time but probably none okay uh then i meet up with her later in like sioux falls or something and we get married it's possible it's it's how hard can it be to like change your identity then very easy it seems like a lot of steps as opposed to just saying to the parents yeah we're going to get married well i guess so you're right about that yes yep our second theory is that dorothy was kidnapped and murdered this is the theory that dorothy's father eventually came to accept as what happened to his daughter in the absence of clues the family came to believe this was the only logical explanation by april the family was so convinced their daughter was dead that they started requesting the police give up the case in fact both her parents evidently wrote dorothy out of their wills because they were so certain she would not resurface look i am not going to pass judgment on a family that is going through grieving but let me pass some judgment here it's weird that you would ever want the case to be stopped being investigated i guess that kind of prolongs the grieving period but at the same time if there's a chance you would think you'd want to keep going and then i don't know how quickly people write dead children out of wills yeah i don't know either what is that like six months later about four and a half months that's pretty quick i've got stuff in my fridge that's been there that's a full season there's a full season a season that's pretty quick it's weird that he would jump to that because if people were like i'm so sorry i bet she's out there somewhere and he was probably just like i bet they stabbed her i bet they killed her i bet she's dead i better write her out of my will it's a weird thought but once again i don't know what it's like to go through that grieving process so possibly this is what their process was and then uh you know it's weird to us because we're outsiders and we're idiots and you know we're looking at this 100 years later but i think we could say that's a bit odd and move on seems odd let's move on perhaps the strongest lead in the murder theory comes from one edward glenoris in 1916 glenoras was serving time in the rhode island state prison for attempted extortion of a clergyman he claimed he found god and wanted to come clean to the warden about his supposed involvement in burying the body of a woman he had come to believe was dorothy arnold glenora said that in what he remembered being december of 1910 a man at a bar named benoit asked for help from him and another man that some reports named little louie these guys sound suspicious little in front of any name he sounds suspicious or like the star of many many silent films yeah i mean the only little i trust is stewart and that's it but his is a little steward no little oh the mouse yeah the man the mouse boy no man he was a mouse man he drove a car little louie does he sounds like a funny little like what's little louie up to this week oh murdering a woman benoit glenoris and little louie were tasked with moving an unconscious woman from a house in new rochelle to a home up the hudson near west point the next day glenoras was informed that the woman had died and he was asked to return to the west point home to help bury her glenoris allegedly buried the woman under a concrete floor in the basement and was paid 250 dollars for his involvement by a wealthy looking man there has been some speculation that man who paid glenoris could have been george griscom though there's no hard evidence to support this bad dudes if if your friend comes up to you and says i need a favor help me move a lady and you're you're like yeah sure enter her apartment no oh no no no she is unconscious gotta move her uh just oh are we taking her to uh the doctor no no to a quiet quiet home somewhere upstate or she could rest yeah yeah next day by the way oops after glenora's confessed to helping bury the woman thought to be dorothy a team of detectives searched a home matching glenoras's vague description on april 21st 1916. when they got to the basement the team was surprised to find an area of the concrete floor that appeared to have been broken up in the past the area however was small about five feet by six inches and the caretaker claimed the floor had been broken to fix a gas pipe when authorities returned a couple days later with the owner's permission to dig up the spot they indeed found a gas pipe within the year authorities were satisfied that glenora's claims were false the third and final theory we're discussing today is that dorothy accidentally died during an abortion in april 1914 the pittsburgh home of one dr c.c meredith was raided by police meredith his nurse and another doctor one h.e lutz were all arrested the home was used as a private office where women would come seeking abortions let's made a statement to the d.a that at one time meredith had told him dorothy arnold had been one of his patients from the way meredith spoke of her let's infer that she had died and her body had been cremated in meredith's office while lutz didn't admit to seeing dorothy himself he did testify that he'd witnessed another young woman who died in meredith's care be cremated in the basement in their raid detectives did find two oversized furnaces in meredith's basement their speculation that griscom could have been who had impregnated dorothy but evidence of this or of dorothy ever being in pittsburgh for an abortion is scant at best just two quick things about that one even back then women didn't have control over their bodies so much that they would have to go to a basement to get an abortion from a creepy doctor who would throw them into a funny little furnace not that that's relevant to today at all donate to planned parenthood but number two i don't really know if this applies to her i don't know if she got the abortion went there or even got impregnated by griscombe or if the griscom thing is even true so so this may be more more just a wild public imagination there is circumstantial evidence that maybe this happened because lutz one of the three people that was arrested in the raid did say that the other doctor had told him that you know uh dorothy was one of his patients whether or not that's true who knows well she could have been there before disappearing as well though or maybe he's trying to shave some time off of his sentence just lying yeah just lying he's lying yeah he's lying to get time off possibly or it happened i guess we won't no i mean sorry why we're here yeah i know it's the end of the episode and you were hoping like the boys are gonna crack it we never do that's the guarantee stories of missing socialites have always captured the public's interest something about a seemingly perfect life gone astray continues to fascinate our darkest imaginations for dorothy arnold a lack of clues that confounded investigators has also given rise to a slew of theories to debate over for more than 100 years despite decades of attention and global searches as for what actually happened to the 25 year old new york heiress on that december day remains unsolved what theory do you got here if any now me i'm a bit of a romantic so i'd like to believe that she eloped i think she ran away just ran away no eloping just scrambled i think she might have ran away and in 1910 how hard is it to run away probably not that hard yeah what you burn your id that's it you're a new person now anyways check out nancy drew on the cw it comes out on october 9th wednesdays this fall she could have solved this case i think i think she could have she's certainly better at her job than we are [Music] you

Channel: BuzzFeed Unsolved Network

Views: 10,180,540

Keywords: BUN, Mini doc, Murder, Ryan bergara, SffZ, Shane madej, The Impossible Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, buzzfeed unsolved network, cold case, conspiracy, crime, disappearance, documentary, haunted, investigate, investigation, investigative, mystery, runaway, theories, true crime, unexplained, unexplained mysteries, unsolved mysteries, unsolved mystery, unsolved network

Id: s_2QTY0V3Yc

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019