The Killing of Father Dahme

"New York Daily News," February 16, 1924, via Newspapers.com

The Reverend Hubert Dahme was one of the most respected and well-liked men in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The elderly Catholic priest was known as kindly, helpful, and sincerely, yet humbly, religious. In short, he appeared to be the last person in the world that anyone would like to see dead.

If you are an old-timer around this blog, you will not be shocked by what comes next.

At about 7:45 p.m. on February 4, 1924, Dahme was walking down Bridgeport's Main Street. Some witnesses stated that he was walking alone, others that he seemed to be accompanied by another man. Whether the man was with Dahme or not, he suddenly turned, and, without a word, shot the priest dead. The assassin then swiftly disappeared into the darkness. Later, no one was able to clearly describe the man, and they did not claim to recognize him. All they could say was that he was comparatively young, of medium height, and wearing a gray cap and an overcoat with a velvet collar. (It should be noted that other people in the area at the time reported seeing two men fleeing the scene.)

This was one of those cases where the investigators did not have the slightest idea even where to begin. Dahme had no enemies. No one was known to even have a discernible reason to feel any hostility to him. Lacking any idea who the killer might of been, or any possible motive for the crime, the police were at a standstill.

Eight days after the murder, 28-year-old Harold Israel was arrested for vagrancy in nearby Norwalk. For months past, the young man had had no occupation other than heavy drinking. When the police realized that the gun he carried was the same caliber that had killed Dahme, they immediately treated him as their top--only, really--suspect. At first, Israel claimed his innocence, but after over 28 hours hours of intense interrogation, he gave in, offering a long, pitiful confession. He explained that on the day of the murder, he was broke, starving, and increasingly desperate about his inability to find work. While wandering aimlessly through the town, something snapped inside him. Out of sheer fury with the world, he pulled his revolver from his pocket and wildly fired at the first person he saw--who was, very unfortunately for the priest, Hubert Dahme. Nellie Trafton, a waitress at a luncheonette near the murder scene, provided some corroboration for this story by stating that shortly before Dahme was killed, she had seen Israel--whom she knew--walking past her shop. Four witnesses to the shooting identified Israel as the killer. A police ballistics expert said that the bullet which killed Dahme came from Israel's gun.

A very sad case, but at least one that was finally solved.

Or was it?

The State Attorney, Homer Cummings, wasn't too sure about that. If Israel was, as he said in his confession, crazed with hunger when he shot Dahme, why didn't he pawn his gun to buy food? If he just randomly shot the first person he saw, why was Dahme shot in the back of the head, not the front? Cummings interviewed Israel himself, bringing up the discrepancies in his story. Israel wound up retracting his confession. He said that under the harsh, lengthy questioning by the police, he found himself willing to tell them anything if they would just leave him alone. He told Cummings that he had really been in a movie theater at the time of the murder.

But what of the eyewitness testimony? One evening, Cummings went to the waitress' restaurant and asked her to show where she had been standing when she saw Israel walk by. When Cummings himself stood in the spot she indicated, he saw that the steam from the restaurant, plus the reflection of the bright lights outside, made it very difficult to see clearly through the glass. When he then walked on the street past the restaurant, the waitress was unable to recognize him. She finally admitted that she had simply invented her entire story, in the hope of claiming the reward that had been offered to anyone who could identify the killer. He tested the witnesses who had identified Israel as the killer by standing in the same places where they had been at the time, and with similar lighting conditions. He had one of his deputies flee the scene in the same way the killer had done. He realized that in the dim light, it was virtually impossible for those people to know who was going by. In the same circumstances, Cummings had been unable to identify his own deputy! After questioning the owner and employees of the movie theater that Israel claimed to have attended, Cummings believed the accused man was telling the truth about his alibi.

Cummings brought in six ballistics experts to do tests on Israel's gun. They all concluded that the defendant's gun fired bullets with distinctive markings that in no way matched the bullet that killed Dahme.

All this was enough for Cummings to tell the court that he was dropping the case against Israel. The young man was freed. The one good thing to be said about this story is that the unnerving experience of being very nearly convicted of murder shocked Israel into pulling his life together. He stopped drinking, got married, and eventually became a successful merchant.

Hartford Courant, April 19, 1925

One can hope that Father Dahme’s ghost was able to take some pleasure in this pleasant plot twist, because his spirit never had the satisfaction of seeing his killer brought to justice. The priest's murder remains a mystery.

[Note: The Dahme case was the inspiration for Elia Kazan's 1947 film "Boomerang."]

Weekend Link Dump

“The Witches’ Cove,” Follower of Jan Mandijn

This week's Link Dump will leave you on the edge of your seat!

In one manner or other.


Who the hell was Bible John?

Why the hell did this woman tickle so many chins?

What the hell was the Hollinwell Incident?

What the hell is the Waffle Rock?

Indigenous Australians had banana farms.

Meanwhile, in the world of paddleboarding goats...

Cremation goes back a long way.

Some four-legged silent film bit players.

The geologist and the mystery creature.

The fiery Fortean death of Mary Reeser.

A brief history of calling cards.

A party castle in the jungle.

The Oxfordshire sheep panics.

The women of Arthurian legend.

The philosophy of executions.

A sleigh tragedy.

Remember that story about the teenagers who eloped to live in a cave?  It all worked out pretty much like you'd think.

Ceres is an ocean world.

Is Mars overrated?

Goodbye to the second-hand bookshop.

The kind of thing that happens when you're too good a pilot.

A strange coincidence from WWII.

Yo-ho-ho, and a coffin of rum.

How to win a fight and lose it at the same time.

Black Peggy and the foundling hospital.

The world's most complicated cake recipe.

A Japanese Bigfoot.

The treadmill as a form of punishment.

A poor boy's progress in Victorian England.

A look at the Weekly World News, possibly the world's weirdest publication.

Longfellow and death.

A medieval noblewoman's long life as a prisoner.

A seditious printer.

A spot for tourists who don't want tourist spots.

Using seashells as money.

An important retirement in the UK's Foreign Office.

The very long history of poison arrows.

Christchurch, New Zealand has an official wizard.

The country estate of actor Edwin Forrest.

This week in Russian Weird looks at Siberia's lost pianos.  And deranged terrorist camels.

The Simmondley pit shaft horror.

The death of theater criticism.

The death of sleeper trains.

A hunter's unsolved disappearance.

A Welsh Roswell.

A Portuguese "Woodhenge."

Murder at a hotel.

And that wraps things up for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a priest's mysterious murder.  In the meantime, as it's supposed to be 104 degrees today here at Strange Company HQ, I thought this song would be appropriate.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

I always say, nothing completes a library quite like a ghost. And if it’s a “nice, gentlemanly” one, all the better. From the “Great Bend Daily Item,” July 25, 1908:

New York.--Columbia University holds that ghost stories may be dismissed with a laugh, until an educated, nice, old gentlemanly ghost gets to hovering 'round Columbia's library building of nights. In other words, there is an undeniable ghost in Columbia's law library, and, as the undergraduates say: "Whatd'ye know about that?"

Three weeks ago the Century club, of Forty-third street, borrowed four portraits of the Columbia law library to hang in a portrait exhibition. They were the portraits of Chancellor Robert E. Livingston, Chancellor Kent, Theodore Dwight, Columbia's old law professor, and Charles M. de Costa, lovingly remembered at the university for a wad of money he bequeathed it. All four came back about two weeks ago in good condition except the de Costa picture, which had a check or two on its varnish. The Century club, being notified, took the canvas to a restorer, leaving where of old the portrait used to hang a bright green spot on the otherwise faded green burlap wall.

Three days ago, at 6 p.m., John Henry, the library's card index boy, rushed from the library gibbering. Miss Cox, the assistant librarian, captured him. "Not again," wailed John through his chattering teeth. "I don't go in there no more; there's a man crawlin' on the wall where the picture was. I don't go back for no money."

Miss Cox entered the library full of scornful unbelief and turned on the electrics. All was as it should be, a bright green oblong on a faded green ground with a book gallery running below it and--

Suddenly a peal of laughter broke in the room and two cases of books on either side of the picture spot emptied their contents with a crash. When Miss Cox found herself in the outer hall, John Henry had gone.

In the morning a watchman reported to Dean Kirchmey that "a kind of a glow" had been visible through the glass doors of the room all night.

Only a few summer and "conditioned" students haunt the library these days. That evening at six (as before) one of them, prowling for a book in the half light of an upper gallery, heard the scratch of a pen writing, writing.

He traced it to the olive green oblong on the blank wall and marched over at once. The pen scratching ceased, but as he stood before the picture spot there rose from the floor a prodigious hollow sigh. The student ran.

With a classmate he returned to the library on tiptoe. The room was vacant, but on the haunted picture spot there glowed an outline of the features that once adorned it, rimmed with a phosphorescent frame. As the youths stared, the face and frame dissolved and the bent figure of a man came out upon the gallery, scurried to the furthest wall and blended with the books. As he vanished they heard a sigh.

The apparition picture, the fleeting figure in the galleries and the hollow sigh have become commonplace now. Even John Henry, the card index autocrat, enters the library without fear in the day-time. For scholarly Columbia is taking its ghost in a cold, scholastic spirit, and already has his nightly walk scheduled for six o'clock evenings, from which hour the ghost has not deviated an iota.

Prof. Hyslop, it is understood, is on the job with other students of the occult, and will conduct a series of experiments with the ghost and the ghost's picture. Possibly, it is said, he may endow science with a pamphlet.

In the meantime, in the daytime, last year's "canned" students continue to work off conditions, John Henry shuffles the index cards and Miss Cox enters names against missing law books.

The Courtship of Sir Edward: A 17th Century Rom-Com

Sir Edward Dering, by William Dobson

This week, we look at a love story. Albeit, a love story that reads more like one of Shakespeare’s more robust comedies.

Edward Dering (1598-1644) was a distinguished figure. He had the distinction of being born in the Tower of London, as his father was then deputy-lieutenant of the site. After he graduated from Cambridge, Dering devoted himself to antiquarian studies and the collection of manuscripts. In 1619, he was knighted by James I, and in 1626 became a baronet.

This is all well and good, but the scholarly Sir Edward would not be entering the hallowed halls of Strange Company HQ if it were not for a curious courtship he entered into. He left a detailed record of his wooing in his diary, and, happily, the document has been preserved for the edification of historians who delight in seeing a dignified British aristocrat making a thorough fool of himself.

By 1628, Sir Edward had been twice widowed, but he felt ready for a third try at matrimony. The lady of his choice was Elizabeth Bennett, the young widow of a prominent London mercer. Mrs. Bennett was extremely rich, well-connected, and far from lacking in personal charms. Naturally, Sir Edward found himself facing a great deal of competition for her hand.

To the extreme amusement of Londoners--who seemed to have viewed the fight to marry Mrs. Bennett as a grand sporting event--the three leading suitors were named Finch, Crow, and Raven. Sir Sackville Crow had been Treasurer of the Navy, but he was soon kicked out of office (due to, in the words of 19th century historian John Timbs, “an unfortunate deficit of which he was unable to give a satisfactory account.”) After this humiliation, it was felt that Sir Sackville was out of the matrimonial running.

Raven--a London physician--came to an even more ignominious end. Having failed to win Mrs. Bennett’s heart through the conventional methods, he thought it a good plan to hide himself in her bedchamber, and after she had retired for the night, awaken her to pop the question yet again.

This worked out as well as any sane person would think. Mrs. Bennett screamed to raise the roof, the servants rushed in and seized the intruder, and poor old lovesick Dr. Raven found himself in the custody of the parish constable. The following day, the Recorder (who, as yet another of Mrs. Bennett’s suitors, must have felt his day was made,) charged Raven with “flat burglary” and ordered him to prison. At his trial, Raven was found guilty of the lesser charge of “ill-demeanor,” and ordered to pay a fine and a short term in jail.

This Recorder, Sir Heneage Finch, was of finer mettle than his imprudent rivals. He was a prominent lawyer, Speaker of the House of Commons, and owned a house so grand it eventually became the royal Kensington Palace. Sir Edward probably saw him as his main rival.

Heneage Finch

Our hero commenced his courtship on the morning after Dr. Raven was told “Nevermore.” His first diary entry, on November 20, was unpromising: “I adventured, was denied. Sent up a leter, which was returned, after she read it.”

When sentiment fails to work, try bribery. The following day, Sir Edward wrote, “I inveigled [George] Newman [one of Mrs. Bennett’s servants] with 20s.

November 24: “I did re-engage [Newman,] 20s. I did also oil the cash-keeper, 20s.”

November 26: “I gave Edmund Aspull [the oiled cash-keeper] another 20s. I was there, but denied sight.”

On November 27, Sir Edmund finally saw some results from his expenditures: “I sent a second letter, which was kept.”  Wisely striking while the metal was hot, on that same day he “set Sir John Skettington” upon one Matthew Cradock, Mrs. Bennett’s cousin and trusted adviser. Sir Edmund rounded off his busy day by having Cash-Keeper Aspull over to dinner, which I assume was a lavish one indeed.

However, the following day brought a setback: “I went to Mr. Cradock, but found him cold.” Sir John’s diplomatic efforts had clearly fallen flat.

On November 29, Sir Edward recorded that he had seen Mrs. Bennett at the Old Jewry Church, “both forenoon and afternoon.” On December 1, he was able to boast that he had sent the widow a third letter, “which was likewise kept.”

During this period, Mrs. Bennett had more serious problems than pesky suitors. A man named Steward had, through judicious bribery, acquired the wardship of her four-year-old son Simon. She was currently in negotiations with him to buy this wardship, but he refused an offer of 1,500 pounds in cash. Steward had suggested they settle the dispute by--you guessed it--getting married.  Although the widow was naturally repulsed by this blatant extortion, she felt it was wise to string him along until she was able to recover custody of her son. On December 5, Sir Edward described a conversation he had had with one Loe, a confidante of Mrs. Bennett’s, about the matter. Loe told him “that Steward was so testy that she durst not give admittance unto any, until he and she were fully concluded for the wardship--that she had a good opinion of me--that he [Loe] heard nobly of me--that he would inform me when Steward was off--that he was engaged for another--that I need not refrain from going to the church where she was, unless I thought it to disparage myself.”

Accordingly, the following Sunday Sir Edward went to St. Olave’s church, where the widow was also among the attendees. As he exited, George Newman whispered to him, “Good news! Good news!” Later that day, Newman called on Sir Edward with the information that Mrs. Bennett “liked well his carriage, and that if his land were not settled on his eldest son there was good hope.” Such encouraging words earned Mr. Newman another twenty shillings. That evening, as Sir Edward dined with Heneage Finch, he got even better news: Sir Heneage sighed that he had despaired of ever winning the widow’s favor, and even offered to help Sir Edward succeed where he himself had clearly failed.

The course of true love, as has been said a million times, never runs smooth, and such was the case with Sir Edward. Just when things were looking so promising, on New Year’s Day he, for unrecorded reasons, got into a huff, and demanded that Mrs. Bennett return his letters. When she did so--with a rather insulting speed--he instantly regretted his little fit of temper. He enlisted a friend named Izaak Walton (who himself gained fame as a biographer and author of “The Compleat Angler,) to act as go-between to calm these suddenly troubled waters. After all, as Sir Edward noted on January 9, “George Newman says she hath two suits of silver plate, one in the country and the other here, and that she hath beds of 100l the bed!”

Dreams of those enticing suits of silver plate and lavish beds inspired Sir Edward to ramp up his wooing. One day, as George Newman walked through Finsbury Fields in the company of Susan (Mrs. Bennett’s nursemaid) and the widow’s small son, they were accosted by Taylor, Sir Edward’s landlord. Taylor convinced the trio to come by for a visit. Our diarist “entertained the child with cake, and gave him an amber box, and to them, wine. Susan professed that she and all the house prayed for me, and told me the child called me ‘father.’ I gave her 5s, and entreated her to desire her mistress not to be offended by this, which I was so glad of. She said she thought she would not.”

Izaak Walton was dispatched to have a chat with Matthew Cradock. Mrs. Bennett’s cousin told him that he would do his best, if Sir Edward “would be ruled by him.” Although all this seemed hopeful, Sir Edward knew the game was far from over. His many rivals all had their own agents seeking to influence the widow, leaving him practically sleepless with anxiety. It was time to get God on his side. A relative of Sir Edward’s, the Dean of Canterbury, was enlisted into the fight. The Dean sent one Dr. Featley, a prominent London clergyman, to use his famed eloquence on Mrs. Bennett. When Sir Henry Wotton, running into Sir Edward in the Privy Chamber, gave him a knowing look and wished him “a full sail,” Dering must have felt that the prize was virtually his at last. The race was nearing the finish line!

Indeed it was, and it proved to be a contest with a surprise ending. After all those shillings, all that cake, all those envoys, Elizabeth Bennett announced that she was marrying...Sir Heneage Finch. Evidently Finch had been her choice from the beginning, but for whatever reason--perhaps because they found these multiple courtships to be capital entertainment--the pair had elected to keep their betrothal a secret.

Shortly after Elizabeth and Sir Heneage wed in April 1629, Sir Edward found his third wife. She was Unton, a daughter of Sir Ralph Gibbs. His marriage to “my ever dear Numps” (as he addressed her in his letters) proved to be a very successful one. As for the Finchs, they also lived in great contentment until Sir Heneage’s early death in 1631.

So here you have something which is probably a first for this blog: a happy ending!

Weekend Link Dump

“The Witches’ Cove,” Follower of Jan Mandijn 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!  But play nicely.

Granny's watching!

The long history of a Yorkshire castle.

In reality, plague doctors looked like more stylish KKK members.

It seems unfair to call anything "the worst novel in the English language" as long as "Wuthering Heights" is still in print.

A haunted penal colony.

The shadows of Hiroshima.

Yet another case where poisoning became habit-forming.

Today's Jupiter weather report: mostly cloudy, with a strong chance of ammonia mushballs.

The saga of a wealthy Crazy Cat Lady.

Archaeologists share their favorite finds.

A really big "Oopsie!" from the Pepsi marketing department.

A ritual offering has been found on the bottom of Lake Titicaca.

An 18th century celebrity shipwreck survivor.

Eyewitness accounts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

How dreams were used to win 18th century lotteries.

Let's talk haunted castles.

Astronomers have found multiple planets orbiting a Sun-like star.

The grave of Mother Damnable.

Sarah Gough, poor little dear.

A look at 18th century wigs.

Where Stonehenge got its stones.

Ah, the good old days, when it just took a comet to send the world into hysteria.

Look, if you're going to pretend to be the guy you just murdered, check his dietary preferences first.

A drug-smuggling cat is on the lam.

The burial of a hard-luck baby.

How portrait miniatures were the 18th century Facebook.

The Kayhausen Boy: one of those very cold murder cases.

How prehistoric humans made twine.

An unusual Yeti.

The missing mines of the Old West.

Why Ranton may be England's weirdest village.

A brief history of holiday cruise ships.

Mike the Headless Wonder Chicken.

This week in Russian Weird looks at mosquito tornadoes.

Disaster on the SS Eastland.

How one woman posthumously founded modern medicine.

A man (probably) murders his family...and disappears.

A Pennsylvania hoodoo house.

The man who went hunting and found aliens instead.

The murder of Jubilee Jim Fisk.

That's it for this week!  Tune in on Monday, when we'll look at courtship, 17th century style.  In the meantime, I think I've posted this song before, but it's a favorite of mine, and if this isn't a song for 2020, I don't know what is.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Many people have curious superstitions about certain photos, but it’s hard to top the following tale from the “St. Louis Post-Dispatch,” August 17, 1898:

Mrs. Elizabeth Dellbregge of 1301 Ohio avenue applied to the Health Department Wednesday morning for a permit to exhume the body of her sister, Mrs. Minnie Schauber, who was buried in Concordia Cemetery Dec. 2, last year. 

In explaining her request, Mrs. Dellbregge related a story of superstition that surprised the Health Department officers and reminded them of the witchcraft that early historians tell about. Mrs. Dellbregge’s belief is that something interred with her dead sister is a hoodoo--that she is causing the Dellbregge family death, mysterious disappearance and general ill luck.   

“A picture of my daughter Annie was buried in the coffin with my sister,” said Mrs. Dellbregge, “and I want to take it out. A fortune teller says that picture is causing all of the trouble.” 

When Mrs. Dellbregge visited the Health Office she was clad in deep mourning, for she buried her daughter Anna but two weeks ago. The death of her child set her to thinking that some ill luck attended the burial of the picture, and when she suggested that idea to a fortune teller, it was promptly confirmed. To add to Mrs. Dellbregge’s troubles her son John, 25 years old, has disappeared from his home, and she has no information as to his whereabouts. Her husband is also missing, but she thinks she knows where to find him. 

Two sons, Henry and Gerhart, are still at home and have not yet become victims of the hoodoo, but Mrs. Dellbregge says she doesn’t know what day they will fall under the baneful influence. 

“I didn’t know they were going to bury Anna’s picture with my sister, or I would never have consented to it,” the woman explained. “I did not get along well with my sister, and I believe the burial of that picture in her coffin was the work of some enemy of mine. The picture was laid right over my sister’s heart, so the fortune tellers say, and that is the most dangerous place it could have been put. My daughter died of convulsions.” 

Added to this weird theory of Mrs. Dellbregge’s is a story she tells about a dream. “Just a little while before Anna died,” she related, “I dreamed that she would live but a short time. The dream troubled me. I told Anna about it and she said she believed my dream would come true, and sure enough it did. The poor girl died in agony, and it all might have been avoided but for that picture. 

“I have permission of my dead sister’s husband for the disinterment of the body, and I propose to have that picture taken out. If it stays in there I will lose my whole family and then I will have to go too.” 

Dr. Karges, mortuary clerk, informed Mrs. Dellbregge that the rules of the Board of Health do not allow the disinterment of bodies at this season, and she was told to wait until September. Then, if she still maintains that the picture is a haunt, the grave will be opened and the picture will be removed. 

While Mrs. Dellbregge’s story discloses superstition rarely encountered these days, she appears perfectly rational. That she is determined and firmly set in her belief, there is no doubt. Mrs. Dellbregge is a member of the Lutheran Church at Grand avenue and Caroline street. She consulted her pastor, Rev. Schiller, about the disinterment of the body, and although she is a devout churchwoman, the pastor was unable to discourage her. 

When she learned that she must wait until September for the removal of the picture she became despondent and tears dropped from her eyes as she trudged away from the city dispensary.

I found nothing more about this story, so I have no idea if poor Mrs. Dellbregge made it to September without any further calamities. In any case, this story teaches a valuable lesson: be very careful about what you put into a coffin besides the dearly departed. 

As a side note, fortune tellers have a lot to answer for.

The Case of the Vanishing Movie Star: A Mystery at Sea

"Philadelphia Inquirer," November 16, 1919, via Newspapers.com

Mary Ann Louisa Taylor (or, as she was known to her many fans, “Marie Empress,”) was a well-known actress of the silent film era. Her sultry good looks brought her much success in the “vamp” roles which were so popular in that period. She was also a talented singer, dancer, and male impersonator. Unfortunately, none of her films survive, so today, even among film historians, she is a largely overlooked figure. She is now only remembered--when she is remembered at all--for the peculiar circumstances of her death.

Little is known about Marie’s personal life. When she was 18, she married a dentist named Walter Herbert Horton. In 1906, after only four years of marriage, she left him in order to pursue a theatrical career. Horton--who seems to have taken the loss of his wife with equanimity--then moved to New Zealand. (As he explained in their 1918 divorce suit, “a wife did not want her husband when she was on the stage.”) Like most performers of her day, Marie supplied the press with many colorful and entirely fictitious details about her life, leaving her real history largely a mystery. 

"Philadelphia Inquirer," November 16, 1919

She became a comedienne in the music halls of her native England, where she was billed as “the girl who is making a name for herself.” This was not hyperbole. She was soon successful enough to be emboldened to try her luck in American vaudeville, where critics praised her “winning personality” and “dainty, dark beauty.” In 1915, she made her screen debut in a melodrama called “When We Were 21.” Again, she was an instant hit. Her films consistently did well at the box office, and reviewers enthused over her beauty, charisma, and acting talents. In short, Marie was well on her way to becoming one of cinema’s biggest stars. 

"Altoona Tribune," April 11, 1916

In the fall of 1919, Marie went to England to make personal appearances and negotiate film contracts with English producers. On October 16, she boarded the Cunard steamer Orduna for her return to New York. The glamorous 35-year-old actress--always dressed in black and sporting a monocle--naturally attracted a good deal of attention from her fellow passengers. She kept largely to herself, but seemed in excellent spirits. 

The Orduna

On the evening of October 26, the Orduna was two and a half hours out from its last stop in Halifax. Around six p.m., a stewardess brought dinner to Marie’s stateroom. Marie told her she wasn’t feeling very well, and wasn’t sure if she could eat anything, but half an hour later, when the stewardess returned to collect the dishes, she found that the actress had finished her meal. Marie told her to come back at about 9:30 with some sandwiches (it was apparently her habit to have a robust snack before going to bed.) The stewardess noted that Marie seemed cheerful and good-humored--as, indeed, she had been throughout the entire voyage. 

When the stewardess brought the sandwiches at precisely 9:30, she found Marie’s stateroom empty. Presuming the actress had gone out on deck, she put the food on a table and left. The next morning, the stewardess tapped on Marie’s door. There was no answer. When she entered the room, she found that the bed had not been slept in.  The sandwiches were untouched.  The only items missing from the stateroom--besides Marie--were her handbag and the jewelry she had worn the night before. When she reported this oddity to the captain, he had the ship thoroughly searched. There was no sign of Marie, and no one on board remembered having seen her. The only conclusion the passengers and crew could come to is that sometime between 6:30 and 9:30 on the night of the 26th, Marie had gone overboard--whether accidentally or deliberately, no one could say. 

The first mystery is how the actress could have gone into the sea. The porthole in her stateroom was far too small for her to fit through, and in any case it was found locked from the inside. For her to go on deck, she would have had to travel a number of well-lighted passageways and salons which, at that time, were crowded with people. The deck itself was also brightly lit, and full of passengers and crew members. Surely, it was reasoned, someone with Marie’s striking looks could not have slipped through and thrown herself into the sea unobserved? 

The second question is why Marie would have wished to drown herself. Although she seems to have not spoken much to anyone on the ship, there was nothing indicating she contemplated anything other than a successful sojourn in New York. A rack above her berth contained a number of photographs of herself which she intended to give to the press when she arrived. From Halifax, she had cabled a New York hotel asking them to reserve a room for her. She had just completed a triumphant tour of Australian music halls, and her stewardess said Marie had hinted to her that she might soon marry. 

Her disappearance was considered so inexplicable that newspapers declared that Marie was alive and well and staging an epic publicity stunt--a theory bolstered by her proven ability to pass herself off as a man. An English press agent, Walter Kingsley, coyly told reporters, “Did you ever hear of a woman registering as Miss So-and-So and later changing her room and calling herself Miss Somebody Else?” He added, “Wouldn’t it be nice if a fishing boat picked her up, or something like that happened?” The grinning Kingsley predicted that the missing woman would soon turn up “mysteriously and unannounced” in New York.  Rumors spread that Marie had managed to sneak into New York disguised as one of the ship’s male crew members. 

"Waterloo Courier," November 18, 1919

However, as the days went by with no sign of the missing actress, and her trunks remained unclaimed, it became obvious that poor Marie had gone overboard.  Was this a case of accidental fall? Suicide? Or, as some darkly suggested, even murder? It was reported that a London man named Oliver Williams was “the one person who could throw light on the mystery,” but that enigmatic statement was never expanded upon. 

Nothing remained to keep her memory alive except her films, which, eerily, continued to play in theaters for months after she was last seen in the flesh. Eventually, of course, even those faded away, and, before very long, the once-acclaimed Marie Empress was nothing but a forgotten mystery at sea.