Charlie Ross.. the kid who disappeared for 65 years and then came back

“Do not take sweets from strangers.”..a sentence that is not strange to us. The parents used to say it to their children for fear of strangers. Come with me, dear reader, to tell you about this painful saying because it goes back to the first kidnapping in the history of America and the whole world. It is the first kidnapping linked to ransom. She was widely known by the press and media

Unknown vehicle

On July 1, 1874, Charlie, 4, and his brother Walter, 6, were playing in the front yard of their home in Germantown, part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At this moment two unknown persons stopped in front of the house and said to the boys, “Do you want to buy sweets?” And the boys agreed at once. The two boys got into a horse-drawn wagon with these two unknowns, and the car quickly sped away from Germantown and a neighboring city.

Charlie started crying after the car got away and asked to go home. The car stopped in front of a store. The two men gave Walter 25 cents and told him to go inside and buy some fireworks. He was so happy and left a lot, especially since Independence Day was close when people celebrate by firing fireworks. He got out of the cart, entered the store, bought firecrackers, and then went out to be surprised that the cart had disappeared with everyone in it.

Shortly after, Christian Ross, the father of the two children, learned of his children's kidnapping after a neighbor told him he had seen Charlie and Walter riding in an unknown wagon driven by two men he did not know before.

As for the mother of the two children, she is on vacation in Atlantic City to be treated for an illness she had contracted. Christian Ross tried not to tell his wife so that the nurse would not get worse on her, and she remained ignorant of the incident until she read an advertisement in the newspaper requesting information about the missing children.

It wasn't long before Christian Ross began receiving many requests for ransom from the kidnappers, and these requests were arriving in the form of handwritten postal letters, and the handwriting was very poor and full of spelling errors, which indicates that the kidnappers were of average education, these letters were coming from him From some of the many offices in Philadelphia and other nearby places, so that I don't know the whereabouts of the kidnappers

One of these messages was:

"Mr. Ross, do not fear for your son Charlie, he is well and well, and there is no force on earth that can take him out of our hands. You will have to pay us to get him back, but beware, if you tell the cops you will put an end to his life and if we feel that there are any efforts made to find him and reach his hiding place will prompt us to exterminate him immediately. Do not believe that the investigators can arrest us because that is impossible. We will contact you in the coming days."

Other messages were asking for a ransom of $20,000 ("$400,000 in today's account") and repeated the same warnings of police intervention, threatening to kill Charlie if his father did not cooperate.

Christian Ross owned a textile and clothing store. The family lived in a large house. But contrary to what the kidnappers believed, the Ross family was not rich but was mired in debt. Christian did not find a solution but to go to the police and tell them about it, and soon the incident became on everyone's lips after the newspapers wrote about it extensively, and millions were printed. Leaflets and posters depicting the child Charlie and asking anyone who sees him to contact his parents or the police, so several popular campaigns have taken place to collect donations to pay the ransom and give it to the kidnappers. Not all searches and investigations yielded results. Because people were so affected by this crime, singers Dexter Smith and Brocoy composed a popular song called "Bring Back Our Love", and another song called "I want to see Mama again" and people used to chant these songs at all parties

Confessions of a dying man

In 1857, on the night of December 13, five months after the kidnapping, two criminals, William Mosher and Joseph Douglas attempted to rob the home of Judge Charles Van Brent. That night, the judge's brother, named Charlie Holmes, was in the house next to his brother's house. He was told that there was a strange movement in his brother's house, so he and a group of men surrounded his brother's house and were armed, and when they approached the house, they saw two men sneaking from it under the darkness trying to escape, so they started shooting at the two men

Mosher died on the spot, while Douglas was wounded but lived for two hours before he died and was able to talk.. and while he was dying he said something that made everyone present shake him. He said, "There is no point in lying now that Mosher and I have kidnapped the child Charlie while he is in his possession, and he will return to his family in some days."

Soon after his confession, Douglas died, and to confirm his words, the child Walter was brought to look at the bodies of Mosher and Douglas to look at the bodies of the two men, and Walter confirmed that they were the same two men who had kidnapped his brother Charlie.

The years passed, and specifically in the year 1875, Christian Ross published a book on the case of his song entitled "The Story of Charlie Ross's Father, the Kidnapped Child" to raise funds to search for his son. By 1878, interest in the case began to fade and fade, so he reprinted the book so that his son's case would return.

Christian Ross and his wife continued to search for their son until their death Christian Ross died in 1897 and his wife died in 1912 They interviewed more than 570 boys and teens, and later men.. from all over the world. They all claimed to be Charlie Ross, but it was proven That they are all cheaters.

Christian and his wife spent a fortune on the scale of that time, about $50,000, in searching for their son, but in vain, and they died without knowing their fate of Charlie.

In 1924 newspapers began to publish Charlie's story again because the period of Charlie's disappearance became 50 years. Walter was 56 years old at the time and Charlie was 54 years old. In a newspaper interview, he told them that he and his three brothers were still getting messages from unknown people saying they were Charlie.

In 1934, Boston Blair came, and he was 64 years old, exactly Charlie's age.

He told the court that he was living in a cave, a man was taken to the city and adopted, and after a while, he told him that he was the kidnapped Charlie, but Walter Ross and his brothers did not believe his words and said that their brother was dead and they never recognized him. In March 1939, that is, 65 years after Charlie's disappearance, the court decided that Boston Blair is Charlie Ross, but his family denied him and did not give him any of their father's fortune

After all this, Charlie moved to Los Angeles and wanted to sell his story to a movie studio to make a movie or series about it, but he failed to do so and died in 1943