Twenty-five and more years ago, when Willie McCormick disappeared, the vicinity bore, as it still bears to a lesser degree, the air of suburbia. Then houses were few and rather far apart. Some of the side streets were unpaved, and all about were patches of unimproved land, where clumps of trees, that once were part of the Bronx Woods, still flourished in dense order. The first apartment houses of the district were building, and gangs of Italian laborers, with a sprinkling of native mechanics, were employed in the excavations and erections. Kilns and a brick yard disfigured one bank of Cromwell Creek, while a factory, a coal dump, and two lumber yards sprawled along the other. Five squares to the north of the creek’s mouth and two squares to the west is the Highbridge police station. The Church of the Sacred Heart, then in charge of the wealthy and venerable Father J. A. Mullin, stands two blocks to the east of Ogden Avenue and practically on the same cross street with the police building. Neither of these places is more than a third of a mile from the McCormick home. Shortly after nine o’clock on the important evening already noted, the two young daughters of William McCormick returned from church without their brother. He had not overtaken them on the way, or joined them at the services. They had not seen him and supposed he had either remained at home, or played truant from church and gone to romp with other boys. The father was immediately alarmed. It was not like Willie to stay out in the dark. He was the eleventh of twelve children, all the others being girls, and he was accordingly petted, overindulged, and feminine. He had an especially strong dread of the dark and had never been known to venture out in the night without his older sisters or other boys. Besides, there had been kidnapping rumors in the neighborhood. It was not long after the notorious abduction of Eddie Cudahy, and parents in all parts of the United States were still nervous and watchful. Whether because of threats, local suspicions, or because of the general alarm, the richest man in the neighborhood had gone to almost ludicrous extremes in his precautions. This man, a cloak manufacturer named Oscar Willgerodt, occupied a large house about a hundred yards from that of the McCormicks. He had a young son, also ten years old. His apprehensions for the safety of this lad, who was a playmate of Willie McCormick, resulted in a ten-foot stone wall across the front of his property, with an ornamental iron gate that was kept padlocked at night, though this step invalidated the fire insurance, an eight-foot iron fence about the sides and rear of the property, topped with strands of barbed wire, and several formidable dogs that ran at large day and night.