Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold

Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold was born in New York City on July 1, 1885, to Francis R. Arnold, a wealthy importer of fine goods, and Mary Martha Parks Arnold. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 1905, she returned to her family's home at 108 East 79th Street and pursued a writing career, submitting short stories to McClure's magazine that were repeatedly rejected. Two months before her disappearance, her father refused her request to move into a Greenwich Village apartment to write.

On the morning of December 12, 1910, Arnold left home to shop for a dress for her sister's upcoming debutante party. She was seen by clerks at Park & Tilford and Brentano's bookstore, and spoke with a friend, Gladys King, outside the bookstore around 2 p.m., telling her she planned to walk home through Central Park. She was never confirmed to have been seen again. When she failed to return for dinner, her family grew alarmed; a friend who called that night was reportedly told, incorrectly, that Arnold had come home and gone to bed with a headache.

Fearing publicity, the Arnold family initially avoided contacting police, instead hiring a family friend and lawyer, John S. Keith, and later Pinkerton detectives, to search hospitals, morgues, and jails in several cities. Investigators found that all of Arnold's clothing except what she was wearing remained at home, along with burned papers believed to be her rejected manuscripts and literature about transatlantic ocean liners. The family did not file a formal police report until January 1911, when Francis Arnold held a press conference and offered a $1,000 reward.

The investigation drew attention to Arnold's secret romantic relationship with George Griscom Jr., a Pittsburgh engineer she had met at Bryn Mawr, with whom she had spent a week at a hotel in September 1910 under a false pretext to her parents. Griscom, questioned by Arnold's mother and brother in Italy, denied knowledge of her whereabouts. Police searched the Central Park Reservoir on her father's theory that she had been attacked and killed, but found nothing.

Numerous theories emerged over subsequent years, including accidental death, amnesia following a fall, suicide linked to her writing failures or troubled relationship with Griscom, death during an illegal abortion, and a claim by a convicted felon, Edward Glennoris, in 1916 that he had helped bury her body, which police could not substantiate. The NYPD formally concluded in 1911 that Arnold was likely dead but found no evidence of a crime. Alleged sightings and letters purporting to be from Arnold continued for years, all found to be false. Her father died in 1922, having spent an estimated $250,000 searching for her and believing she had been murdered; her mother died in 1928, reportedly still hoping her daughter was alive. Dorothy Arnold's disappearance remains unresolved.