Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold (1884?–1910?) was an American socialite who disappeared mysteriously in 1910.

Arnold was the daughter of wealthy perfume importer Francis Arnold and the niece of the magistrate Rufus Wheeler Peckham. She had graduated from Bryn Mawr College and unsuccessfully tried her hand as a writer.

Arnold left her parents' home in Manhattan, New York City on the morning of December 12, 1910. She was going to go shopping for a dress for a party. Acquaintances she met in the Fifth Avenue later described her as cheerful. She was last seen in Brentano's bookstore on 26th Street, where she purchased a book of epigrams; before that, she had visited Park & Tilford's store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 27th Street and charged a pound of candy to her account. At the bookstore she met a female friend, who later reported that Arnold had intended to walk home through Central Park. That night, she failed to come back for dinner.

The Arnolds feared that the case could be socially embarrassing — Dorothy had eloped and spent a week with George Griscom, Jr., a month before. Death would have been preferable to a social gaffe. Instead of calling the police, they made discreet enquiries through John S. Keith, a family friend, and hired Pinkerton detectives to investigate the disappearance. Keith searched hospitals, morgues and jails in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for three weeks until giving up.

The Arnold family turned to police six weeks after their daughter had disappeared. In a press conference, Francis Arnold said he believed that Dorothy might have been attacked and killed in Central Park and her body thrown into the reservoir. Although he refused to mention Griscom's name, journalists tracked him down.

Griscom, who was in Naples at the time, sent a telegram where he stated that he did not know where Dorothy was. In January 1911 Dorothy's mother and his brother John travelled to Italy to forcibly interrogate him, without results. Griscom could only hand over a letter where Dorothy had mentioned her depression over a story she had written and which had been rejected by a magazine.

Intrigued by the disappearance, and probably to quell any suspicions he might have something to do with it, Griscom later spent thousands of dollars searching for Dorothy — without results. He paid for ads in major newspapers asking Dorothy to come home.

Rumors and theories abounded. Dorothy was rumored to be in a hospital somewhere with total amnesia, but there was nobody who matched her description. Others suggested she might have died during a botched abortion. Some of Dorothy's friends suspected that Dorothy might have committed suicide because Griscom had refused to marry her. The most widespread rumor was that she had become pregnant out of wedlock, the family had banished her to Switzerland, and the search was a very elaborate ruse to hide the scandal. Others said that she had simply decided to disappear.

There were numerous "sightings" of Dorothy all over the United States, but all of them proved to be false. In 1916 a Rhode Island convict claimed that somebody resembling Griscom had paid him $150 to dig a grave for Dorothy in a cellar of a house near West Point. Police did not find any sign of any corpse.

Francis Arnold died in 1922, having spent over $100,000 trying to find Dorothy. In his will he stated that he had come to believe his daughter was dead. His wife died in 1928.

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Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: December 12, 1910 from New York City, New York
Classification: Missing
Age: 25 years old
Height and Weight: 5'1, 160 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Dark brown hair, gray/blue eyes.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A tailor-made blue serge suit, and a black velvet hat lined in pale Alice blue and decorated with two silk roses.


Details of Disappearance

Arnold was a member of a prominent millionaire family in New York City in 1910. Her father was an established perfume importer and her family had high social standing as a result. Arnold was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and was attempting to gain notice as a writer. She resided with her family in a mansion on east 79th Street in the borough of Manhattan in 1910.
Arnold departed from her home during the morning hours of December 12; she told her mother she was going shopping for a new evening gown. Arnold's mother offered to accompany her but Arnold said she wanted to go alone. She walked westward on 5th Avenue, then turned south. A clerk at the Park and Tilford's candy store who sold Arnold some chocolates at 1:45 p.m. said she was in good spirits. Arnold bought a book at Brentano's, a bookstore on 27th and Fifth, and had a chance encounter with a friend in the store; they chatted for a few minutes before Arnold left the establishment. She was supposed to meet her mother for lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel that day but never kept the appointment. Arnold has never been heard from again. Her family believes she had approximately $25 in cash on her the day she vanished.

Arnold's parents did not initially worry when she did not return home that evening; they assumed she was spending the night with a friend. When she did not come home on the second night, her parents became concerned. Her family did not initially contact the police because they were afraid of negative publicity; they hired private investigators to search for her instead. No evidence was located as to her whereabouts, and when police were informed of her disappearance several months later, their search turned up nothing either. Arnold's father believed that she had been murdered and disposed of in a reservoir in Central Park in December 1910, but nothing was found to support his theory. Her disappearance was widely publicized and her photograph was published in newspapers all over the United States and in Europe, but the publicity yielded no viable yields.

In the investigation into Arnold's disappearance, it was discovered that she had rented a post office box in the months prior to vanishing. She kept the box's existence a secret from her loved ones. It is believed that Arnold used the box to keep rejected manuscripts from being found out by her family.

Authorities discovered that Arnold had been secretly dating George C. Griscom Jr., a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania engineer in his forties, at the time of her disappearance. A picture of him is posted below this case summary. Arnold spent a week with her boyfriend several months prior to the time she vanished; she had told her family she was going to visit some college friends but went to see Griscom instead. On the way home from her tryst, she pawned $500 worth of jewelry for $60.

Griscom was in Florence, Italy in December 1910. He participated in the search for Arnold and stated that when she was found, he would marry her. Griscom denied any involvement in Arnold's disappearance and gave her family a letter she had written to him earlier in 1910. The note stated that one of her short stories had been rejected by the editorial staff of a magazine. Arnold insinuated that she was depressed as a result.

Authorities investigated the possibility that Arnold had staged her disappearance; before she vanished, she had asked to be allowed to move out of her parents' home and her father refused to let her go. However, the voluntarily disappearance theory was largely discredited as the months passed and none of Arnold's loved ones heard from her. Some people believed that Arnold committed suicide; others theorized she had been pregnant and died in a botched abortion. Area hospitals were checked for patients who fit Arnold's description, as some investigators thought she may have been injured and did not recall her identity. There was no evidence Arnold was admitted to any medical facility in New York City.

Arnold's case is no longer under investigation due to the amount of time that has passed since she vanished, but her disappearance remains unsolved.

Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold

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THE VANISHED HEIRESS
What Happened to Dorothy Arnold?


Pretty young heiress Dorothy Arnold vanished into thin air from Fifth Avenue and 27th Street, one of the busiest street corners in the world. Hundreds of people surrounded her on that bleak winter morning and yet no one saw anything. She simply disappeared without a trace -- never to be heard from again.

On the cold morning of December 12, 1910, Dorothy left her parent’s home in Manhattan to go shopping for a dress to wear to her younger sister’s “coming out” party. It was the holiday season in New York and a time for festivities, galas and balls and this particular party was a much-anticipated one for the Dorothy, a young and beautiful graduate of Bryn Mawr and the daughter of a prosperous and socially prominent clan.

As she left the house that morning, several acquaintances stopped and spoke with her as she walked west along Fifth Avenue and others saw her going toward a bookstore on 27th Street. They all said that she seemed cheerful. A clerk who sold Dorothy a box of chocolates at Park and Tilford's said that she was very carefree and friends who ran into her outside of the bookstore said that they noticed nothing unusual about her. Strangely though, these acquaintances would be the last people to ever see the girl who came to be known as the “vanishing heiress” alive.

When se failed to return to 79th Street for dinner that night, her family telephoned friends but she had not been seen by any of them. People of high social position like the Arnolds never called the police or informed the newspapers of their troubles. The decided to keep Dorothy's disappearance a secret, conducting discreet investigations through a friend of the family and with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Her parents spent thousands with the Pinkerton’s but they had no more success than John S. Keith, the family friend did. Keith was the attorney for the family and he had often escorted Dorothy to social functions, so her took her disappearance especially hard. For weeks, he searched hospitals, morgues and jails in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. He inspected patients, inmates and corpses before finally giving up in despair.

The secret investigations continued for six agonizing weeks, before the Arnold’s finally turned to the police and the newspapers. Her father, Francis Arnold, summoned reporters to his office and announced his belief that Dorothy had been “attacked in Central Park” on her way home and that her body had been thrown into the reservoir. As grim and hopeless as this sounds, the rigid and proper Arnold would rather his daughter be dead than the alternative -- that she had run away with a man with whom she had spent a clandestine week several months before. Arnold refused to give out any information about the man so the newspaper reporters tracked him down on their own.

The man’s name was George Griscom, Jr. but he denied any knowledge of Dorothy’s whereabouts. Griscom was a tubby, 40 year-old who lived quietly with his parents on Philadelphia's Main Line. The newspapers soon learned that he had been involved with Dorothy and that the summer before, she had done something that society girls in those days simply did not do. After telling her family that she was going to Boston to visit a Bryn Mawr classmate, she met Griscom instead. The two stayed at separate Boston hotels but at the end of the week, money ran out and so Dorothy pawned some jewels, signing her real name to the pawn shop record. It was this pawnbroker who had tipped off the press to her Boston visit.

By the time of Dorothy's disappearance, Griscom was in Naples with his parents and sent word by cable that he had no idea where Dorothy could be. At a January 22 news conference, Mr. Arnold stated that his wife, a semi-invalid, had gone to New Jersey to escape from the pressures of the search. However, the woman and her son, John, soon turned up in Italy instead, where they sought out Griscom. John was so suspicious of the rich bachelor that he throttled him and threatened to kill him if he didn’t reveal where Dorothy was hiding.

George Griscom Jr., Dorothy's half-hearted suitor, preferred bachelorhood to matrimony but he was struck by her disappearance & publicly spent thousands of dollars searching for her.


Griscom insisted that he had nothing to do with her disappearance but he did turn over a letter that she had recently written to him concerning her depression over a story she had written that had been rejected by a magazine. She concluded the letter with “All that I can see ahead is a long road with no turning.” Griscom feared that she had been so distraught over this that she had taken her own life. Or so he said. A few friends believed that if Dorothy had committed suicide, she had done so because Griscom refused to marry her.

Meanwhile, back in the states, theories were being floated as to what might have happened to the young woman. Some thought that perhaps Dorothy was in a hospital somewhere, suffering from amnesia. It was thought that perhaps she had slipped an icy sidewalk that chilling morning and had fallen, striking her head on the pavement. A check of the hospitals in Manhattan revealed no one matching her description though. Others suggested that she might have been pregnant and had died on the abortionist's table. The most durable rumor was that she had become pregnant and had been banished by the family to Switzerland in disgrace. The search for her had been merely an elaborate ruse to save the Arnold's from the shame. However, as a New York society girl, Dorothy knew many people who would travel to Switzerland and might recognize her. But she was never seen there -- or anywhere else for that matter.

As the publicity began to spread, reports of “Dorothy sightings” began coming in from all over the country. She was “recognized” in hundreds of cities but all of the reports turned out to be false. Francis Arnold spent more than $100,000 trying to recover his daughter, but it all amounted to nothing. He died in 1922 and his wife passed on in 1928, never knowing what became of the young woman. In Arnold’s will though, a provision stated that he had left nothing for Dorothy “for I am satisfied that she is not alive.”

George Griscom later returned home and he also continued to search, spending huge amounts of money on “Come Home Dorothy” ads in major newspapers. But could this have been an act to throw off a trail that may have led to his own door? Six years after the girl had disappeared, a Rhode Island convict released a story to the press that claimed he had been paid $150 to dig a grave for the murdered heiress. The description that he gave of the man who paid him was strikingly close to that of Griscom, however he never learned the man’s name. The convict stated that Dorothy had died after a botched abortion and that she had been buried in the cellar of a house near West Point. Police unearthed cellars all over the area but they found no sign of a corpse.

And no one ever found any sign of Dorothy Arnold.


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