Mysteries of the missingSmith, Edward H. (Edward Henry)
History
Mysteries of the missing
Smith, Edward H. (Edward Henry)
Biography; Kidnapping; Missing persons
Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs. Glass could make up
her mind, and the crowd stood outside crying for news and being told
to wait, that the child was still being examined. Finally the negative
word was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully away.
Even then the Glasses stayed two days longer in the town, eager to find
other evidence that might yet change their minds.
A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child was found. She
confessed that her husband had abandoned and would not support her,
that she had been unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and
that in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe store,
hoping that some one would adopt him. The little boy had learned to say
he was Jimmie Glass through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and
other local emotionals.
So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous man who had gone
to the country to recover and been struck with this fatality, and for
the sorrowing mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses seemed
about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire of doubt and grief that took
in the Rosses years before.
One morning on the first days of December of 1923, Otto Winckler, of
Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits not far from Greeley, where Jimmie
Glass had disappeared. There had been a very dry autumn and the marshy
ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse, ordinarily not to
be crossed afoot, was caked and firm. A light snow had powdered the
accumulations of brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for
a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.
Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter fashion, his shotgun
ready in his hands, his eyes fixed ahead, covering the ground for some
sudden flurry of a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a
round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped after it; picked
it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s memory fled back over the
eight and one half years to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too,
had taken part. Could this be---- He did not stop to ponder much, but
looked about. Very near the spot from which he had kicked the skull
were a pair of child’s shoes. He picked them up carefully and found
them to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was missing,
carried away in those long seasons by beasts and birds, no doubt.
Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen and telegraphed to Charles
Glass. The father responded at once and went over the ground with the
hunter and with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the relative
positions of the shoes and the skull, that the little boy must have
lain down on his side and wakened no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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