On December 10, 1910, Dorothy Arnold was just another 25-year-old Upper East Side heiress.
In six weeks, she’d be the most famous missing woman in New York City.
Wearing a tailored blue coat and stylish black velvet hat, Dorothy, a Bryn Mawr grad, left her parents’ home at 108 East 79th Street to shop for a gown at a Fifth Avenue department store.
After running into a friend and chatting about an upcoming society function, no one saw her again.
It was unlike Dorothy to just take off; she was known as a stable young woman making a go at a career as a writer.
“The Arnold family, eager to avoid scandal, kept the disappearance a secret from both the press and the police for six weeks, drafting private detectives instead,” wrote Andrew Roth in Infamous Manhattan.
By late January, when no trace of Dorothy turned up, they went public. Immediately, journalists dug up dirt.
Dorothy was having an affair with a Philadelphia man, but he claimed to know nothing of her whereabouts.
After thousands of dollars were spent looking for her and years passed, the case went cold.
“Various rumors claim that she died during an abortion, that she fell overboard from a ferryboat, or that her parents had banished their pregnant daughter to Switzerland,” wrote Roth. “Her disappearance remains a complete mystery.”
Tags: 108 East 79th Street, Andrew Roth Infamous Manhattan, Dorothy Arnold, famous missing persons cases NYC, Missing Girl New York City, New York City Heiress missing, New York cold cases, Notorious missing persons cases
May 31, 2012 at 8:44 pm |
Aliens!
November 5, 2012 at 5:24 am |
She ran away!
June 22, 2017 at 8:22 pm |
What makes you think that???…??.Actually,you might be right since she was pregnant and not married and supposedly had an abortion…maybe as a socialite and a prominent family,they were probably embarrassed and felt that she shamed the family name…I don’t know,it’s just a theory…
March 20, 2019 at 12:17 am |
This story fascinates me. I think she was murdered, but by whom, is the question. I’d be taking a really close look at the family.
March 20, 2019 at 4:29 pm |
It’s an intriguing case and I’m surprised it’s not more well known.