The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiously and hourly expected. But he had not arrived at the end of a week, and the police officials immediately moved in new directions. Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt, of New York, a former police officer, who was later convicted of complicity in the abduction. Westervelt and Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-time policeman made a rambling statement containing little information, but his sister admitted that she had been privy to the matter of the kidnapping. She had known for several months, she said, that her husband had kidnapped Charlie Ross, but she had not been consulted in his planning, and did not know where he had kept the child hidden, and was unable to give any information. Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed the child to be alive and stated her reasons. She did not believe her husband, burglar and kidnapper though he was, capable of injuring a child. He had four of his own and had always been a good father. The poverty of his family had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs. Mosher related, she had pleaded with her husband to return the stolen boy to his parents, saying that it was cruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be little chance of collecting the ransom safely, and that the danger to the abductors was becoming greater every day. This conversation, she said, had taken place only a few days before the Van Brunt burglary and Mosher’s death. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed that the child should be sent home, she felt sure it was still living. But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of his abductors only intensified the quest for the boy. Detectives were sent to Europe, to Mexico, to the Pacific coast, and to various other places, whither false clews pointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Ross himself, in the course of the next few years, made hundreds of journeys to look at suspected children in all parts of the United States. He spent, according to his own account, more than sixty thousand dollars on these hopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resulted as had all the others. At last, after more than twenty years of seeking, Christian K. Ross gave up in despair, saying he felt sure the boy must be dead.