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In August 1898, a small package arrived at a prominent home in Dover, Delaware, bearing no return address. Inside: a box of chocolate bonbons, a cambric handkerchief, and a note reading "With love to yourself and baby." Mary Elizabeth Penington Dunning shared the candy with her sister Ida Harriet Deane and several guests on the family porch that evening. Within hours, everyone who ate the chocolates was violently ill. Within days, Mary and Ida were dead from arsenic poisoning. The killer was Cordelia Botkin, a woman sitting three thousand miles away in San Francisco. She had nevermet her victims. Her target had been the family of her former lover, Associated Press correspondent John Preston Dunning, who had ended their three-year affair when he departed for the Spanish-American War. Botkin purchased arsenic from a drugstore on Market Street, laced a box of bonbons from George Haas and Sons Confectionery, and mailed the package from the Ferry Post Office. She had weaponized the United States Postal Service. The investigation that followed linked Botkin to the crime through handwriting analysis, drugstore receipts, candy shop identification, and a price tag she forgot to remove from the handkerchief. San Francisco Police Chief Isaiah W. Lees coordinated the cross-continental investigation, and handwriting expert Daniel T. Ames matched Botkin's penmanship to the package and anonymous letters she had previously sent to the family. Her trial in San Francisco captivated the nation, with William Randolph Hearst's Examiner erecting a public bulletin board outside the courthouse to update the crowds. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In August 1898, a small package arrived at a prominent home in Dover, Delaware, bearing no return address. Inside: a box of chocolate bonbons, a cambric handkerchief, and a note reading "With love to yourself and baby." Mary Elizabeth Penington Dunning shared the candy with her sister Ida Harriet Deane and several guests on the family porch that evening. Within hours, everyone who ate the chocolates was violently ill. Within days, Mary and Ida were dead from arsenic poisoning. The killer was Cordelia Botkin, a woman sitting three thousand miles away in San Francisco. She had never met her victims. Her target had been the family of her former lover, Associated Press correspondent John Preston Dunning, who had ended their three-year affair when he departed for the Spanish-American War. Botkin purchased arsenic from a drugstore on Market Street, laced a box of bonbons from George Haas and Sons Confectionery, and mailed the package from the Ferry Post Office. She had weaponized the United States Postal Service. The investigation that followed linked Botkin to the crime through handwriting analysis, drugstore receipts, candy shop identification, and a price tag she forgot to remove from the handkerchief. San Francisco Police Chief Isaiah W. Lees coordinated the cross-continental investigation, and handwriting expert Daniel T. Ames matched Botkin's penmanship to the package and anonymous letters she had previously sent to the family. Her trial in San Francisco captivated the nation, with William Randolph Hearst's Examiner erecting a public bulletin board outside the courthouse to update the crowds.

In the woods above Brattleboro, Vermont, a 65-foot stone tower has stood since the 1890s. It was not built by architects or hired masons. It was built by the patients of an insane asylum, stone by stone, under the direction of their doctors who believed that breaking rocks could fix broken minds. But some patients found another use for the tower they had built with their own hands. They climbed it one last time. In 1938, officials sealed the door shut. At the base of that tower sits a cemetery holding more than 650 burials, many marked only with numbers. This is the story of Anna Hunt Marsh, the daughter of Vermont's Lieutenant Governor, who watched her husband's patient die from ice water submersion and forced opium comas in 1806. She spent twenty-eight years turning that grief into action. When she died in 1834, her will contained a single sentence that would change Brattleboro forever: ten thousand dollars left for the purpose of building a hospital for the insane in Windham County. She became the first woman in American history to found a mental health institution. Timeline of Events:1806: Richard Whitney dies under Dr. Perley Marsh's experimental treatments in Hinsdale, New Hampshire1834: Anna Hunt Marsh dies, leaving $10,000 (over $300,000 today) to establish a psychiatric hospital1836: The Vermont Asylum for the Insane opens in Brattleboro with no chains, no cells, and no fences1887-1894: Patients construct the 65-foot Retreat Tower from locally quarried granite on the ridge above campus1938: Tower entrance sealed after multiple patient deathsHistorical Significance:The Brattleboro Retreat remains one of the oldest continuously operating psychiatric hospitals in the United States. Founded on the radical premise that the mentally ill deserved kindness rather than chains, it pioneered America's first patient-produced newspaper, the first swimming pool at any hospital in the world, and a campus that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. In 2016, a cemetery restoration project recovered names for the numbered graves where possible and installed a memorial marker for those whose identities were permanently lost. The tower itself was restored by volunteer stone workers in 2019. Anna Hunt Marsh never saw the asylum open. She missed it by two years. But nearly two hundred years later, her institution still treats patients on the same ground her trustees purchased with her money. Sources: Brattleboro Reformer archives, Vermont Public Radio, National Register of Historic Places documentation, Brattleboro Retreat institutional records, Atlas Obscura. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In the woods above Brattleboro, Vermont, a 65-foot stone tower has stood since the 1890s. It was not built by architects or hired masons. It was built by the patients of an insane asylum, stone by stone, under the direction of their doctors who believed that breaking rocks could fix broken minds. But some patients found another use for the tower they had built with their own hands. They climbed it one last time. In 1938, officials sealed the door shut. At the base of that tower sits a cemetery holding more than 650 burials, many marked only with numbers. This is the story of Anna Hunt Marsh, the daughter of Vermont's Lieutenant Governor, who watched her husband's patient die from ice water submersion and forced opium comas in 1806. She spent twenty-eight years turning that grief into action. When she died in 1834, her will contained a single sentence that would change Brattleboro forever: ten thousand dollars left for the purpose of building a hospital for the insane in Windham County. She became the first woman in American history to found a mental health institution. Timeline of Events: 1806: Richard Whitney dies under Dr. Perley Marsh's experimental treatments in Hinsdale, New Hampshire 1834: Anna Hunt Marsh dies, leaving $10,000 (over $300,000 today) to establish a psychiatric hospital 1836: The Vermont Asylum for the Insane opens in Brattleboro with no chains, no cells, and no fences 1887-1894: Patients construct the 65-foot Retreat Tower from locally quarried granite on the ridge above campus 1938: Tower entrance sealed after multiple patient deaths Historical Significance: The Brattleboro Retreat remains one of the oldest continuously operating psychiatric hospitals in the United States. Founded on the radical premise that the mentally ill deserved kindness rather than chains, it pioneered America's first patient-produced newspaper, the first swimming pool at any hospital in the world, and a campus that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. In 2016, a cemetery restoration project recovered names for the numbered graves where possible and installed a memorial marker for those whose identities were permanently lost. The tower itself was restored by volunteer stone workers in 2019. Anna Hunt Marsh never saw the asylum open. She missed it by two years. But nearly two hundred years later, her institution still treats patients on the same ground her trustees purchased with her money. Sources: Brattleboro Reformer archives, Vermont Public Radio, National Register of Historic Places documentation, Brattleboro Retreat institutional records, Atlas Obscura.

In 1891, the first twenty-five patients stepped off a train and walked into the Vermont State Asylum for the Insane in Waterbury, a sprawling brick-and-stone campus built along a ridge above the Winooski River. The facility was supposed to heal broken minds through fresh air and structured labor. Instead, it grew into something the entire state whispered about -- a place so defined by confinement that saying someone "ought to go to Waterbury" became shorthand for madness itself. This episode traces the full arc of the Waterbury asylum, from its founding under Governor William P. Dillingham through the decades of overcrowding that packed 1,728 patients into wards designed for far fewer. It follows the rise of Dr. Eugene A. Stanley, the superintendent who opened patient records to University of Vermont zoology professor Henry Perkins and the Eugenics Survey of Vermont -- a program that cataloged more than 6,000 Vermonters by bloodline and targeted Abenaki, French-Canadian, disabled, and low-income families for sterilization. Timeline of Key Events: 1763: Waterbury chartered by Governor Benning Wentworth, named after Waterbury, Connecticut. 1891: Vermont State Asylum for the Insane opens; first 25 patients arrive from Brattleboro. 1925: Henry Perkins launches the Eugenics Survey of Vermont at UVM, with fieldworker Harriett Abbott documenting over 60 families. 1931: Vermont passes Act 174, "A Law for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization." At least 253 Vermonters sterilized through 1957; two-thirds were women. 2011: Tropical Storm Irene floods the hospital; 51 patients evacuated. The facility never reopens. 2021: Vermont House votes 146-0 to formally apologize for state-sanctioned eugenics on the 90th anniversary of the sterilization law. Historical Significance: The Waterbury story reaches far beyond one institution. It reveals how state power, medical authority, and pseudoscience combined to strip reproductive rights from hundreds of Vermonters -- many of them indigenous Abenaki families who hid their identity for generations to survive. Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Abenaki has spoken publicly about his grandmother changing her name three times to escape the state's eugenics lists. Meanwhile, on Perry Hill above the old campus, an ongoing search has revealed that the 1991 memorial marker for 19 deceased patients was placed in the wrong location. The dead are still waiting to be found. The 2021 legislative apology, championed by Rep. Tom Stevens of Waterbury and passed unanimously, marked Vermont as one of the first states to formally reckon with its eugenics history -- but the scars on Abenaki families and other targeted communities remain. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Episode Summary In the deep forests of Hancock County, Maine, there's a place that time forgot--Riceville, a company town that once thrived around a tannery on Buffalo Stream. For over a century, whispers have circulated about a plague that supposedly wiped out the entire population overnight, with tales of bodies in the streets and a mass grave hidden somewhere in the woods. The truth is far more human, and perhaps more unsettling: Riceville died not from disease, but from a single catastrophic fire and the cold economics that followed. At its peak in 1890, Riceville was home to 136 residents. Workers peeled bark from hemlock trees and processed it into tannin for the leather industry. The community had a general store, a boarding house, and a schoolhouse where children learned their letters. Some accounts even mention a baseball team. But every soul in Riceville depended on one employer--the tannery. Timeline of Events 1879: F. Shaw and Brothers establishes a bark extract works in Township 39, Hancock County, Maine. 1883: F. Shaw and Brothers collapses with $8.5 million in debt. The Riceville operation continues under creditor management. 1896: Buzzell and Rice Tanning Company purchases the facility and upgrades it to a full tannery processing buffalo hides. 1898: James Rice and his brothers Francis X. and John take full control, forming Hancock Leather Company. The town is officially named "Riceville" and receives a post office. December 30, 1906: A lantern explodes in the roll house, sparking a fire that destroys the tannery, sawmill, engine house, and multiple outbuildings. 1910: Census records show zero residents remaining in Township 39. Historical Significance Riceville's story illuminates a pattern that repeated itself across industrial America: company towns built around single industries that could vanish overnight when that industry failed. The Shaw Brothers alone operated 39 tanneries across Maine that eventually closed. Communities from Kingman to Grand Lake Stream shared similar fates. What makes Riceville distinctive is the legend that grew in its absence. The plague narrative didn't appear in any historical record until nearly a century after the town's abandonment--most prominently when the Bangor Ghost Hunters made Riceville their first investigation around 2000. Their director, Harold "Bubba" Murray, admitted in a 2009 Bangor Daily News interview that despite years of searching, "We were told about a cholera epidemic, a plague... but we were never able to confirm anything." The ghost story persists because Riceville left almost no records behind. Most documents likely burned with the tannery. The town was never incorporated--just a numbered township in unorganized territory. When historical gaps exist, imagination fills them, preferring plague and mystery to the mundane tragedy of unemployment. Today, determined visitors can still reach the site via logging roads from Milford, Maine. They'll find stone foundations, a fenced cemetery with unreadable headstones, and the ghosts of roads running north along Buffalo Stream. What they won't find is evidence of mass death--just what remains when a town loses its reason to exist and the forest takes it back. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I have covered a lot of tragedies on this show, but this one hit different. George Gustavus lost his wife and his twelve-year-old son when a seventeen-foot storm surge destroyed his home during the 1938 hurricane. He was pulled from the water half a mile away. And that same night--still soaking wet, still grieving--he climbed back up the lighthouse tower and helped restore the beacon. The light at Prudence Island has never gone dark since. Some stories remind you what duty really means. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Episode Summary On September 21, 1938, a Category 3 hurricane racing northward at sixty miles an hour blindsided the wealthy summer colony of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. With no radar, satellites, or modern forecasting, residents had almost no warning before a wall of water--estimated at fifty feet high--rolled over Fort Road's exclusive Napatree Point peninsula. Forty-two people were trapped in their Victorian summer cottages. Fifteen didn't survive. Those who lived rode debris across Little Narragansett Bay, clinging to floating roof sections as waves crashed over them. The Fort Road Massacre, as locals would call it, wiped out an entire way of life in less than an hour. Thirty-nine cottages, the Yacht Club, the Beach Club, and a bathing pavilion--all destroyed. The families who had summered there for generations never rebuilt. Seven years later, in 1945, the Watch Hill Fire District purchased Napatree Point for ten thousand dollars and made a decision that still stands: the land would remain forever wild. Today, Napatree Point is an eighty-six-acre conservation area where piping plovers nest and visitors can walk where mansions once stood. Timeline of Key Events September 4, 1938: Hurricane forms near Cape Verde Islands off Africa September 19, 1938: Storm reaches Category 5 strength near Bahamas September 21, 1938 (10:00 AM): Washington Weather Bureau downgrades storm to tropical storm September 21, 1938 (1:00 PM): Mrs. Camp's luncheon at Weekapaug; guests note "strange yellow light" over water September 21, 1938 (3:00-4:30 PM): Hurricane strikes Fort Road; storm surge devastates peninsula September 21, 1938 (6:00 PM): Winds die; Fort Road has ceased to exist 1945: Watch Hill Fire District purchases Napatree Point; no rebuilding permitted Historical Significance The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 remains the most powerful and deadly to strike the region in recorded history, killing between six hundred and seven hundred people across Long Island and southern New England. Rhode Island suffered the worst casualties. The disaster exposed catastrophic gaps in the nation's weather forecasting infrastructure--a twenty-eight-year-old junior forecaster was the only meteorologist on duty when the storm made landfall because senior staff were at a conference. The tragedy led directly to massive improvements in hurricane tracking and warning systems that Americans take for granted today. Providence completed the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in 1966. Coastal building codes were strengthened throughout New England. The decision to preserve Napatree Point as a wildlife refuge--made decades before such conservation efforts became common--stands as one of the first examples of managed retreat from a vulnerable coastal area. According to the Watch Hill Conservancy, the piping plover, a federally endangered species, now nests on the same barrier beach where Victorian mansions once stood. Sources: Watch Hill Conservancy, PBS American Experience "Wake of '38", National Weather Service, Rhode Island Historical Society Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Wreck of the New Era: A Maritime Disaster That Changed American Rescue On November 13, 1854, the residents of Deal Beach, New Jersey were awakened not by the gale-force winds rattling their windows, but by the desperate, unceasing clanging of a ship's bell cutting through the storm. Through the fog and driving rain, they saw what would become one of the most haunting sights in American maritime history: a massive three-masted clipper ship, stuck fast on a sandbar just 500 yards from shore, her full sails still set and her decks crowded with passengers crying for help. The New Era was a brand-new vessel, just completed at the Bath Shipyard in Maine and embarking on only the second leg of her maiden voyage. She carried 385 German immigrants—men, women, and children who had paid their life savings for passage to a new life in Pennsylvania. They had already endured 46 harrowing days at sea, during which cholera had swept through steerage quarters, claiming between 40 and 46 lives. Bodies wrapped in canvas were slipped overboard in darkness so as not to alarm the other passengers. The survivors were exhausted, weakened, and now tantalizingly close to safety—close enough that rescuers standing on the beach could see individual faces. As dawn broke that November morning, a series of gigantic waves lifted the New Era off the outer sandbar and deposited her just 150 yards from shore. Close enough to hit with a thrown stone. But the same waves spun the ship broadside to the beach, leaving her vulnerable to the heavy seas that would ultimately destroy her. Timeline of Events September 28, 1854: The New Era departs Bremerhaven, Germany with 385 German immigrants bound for New York City and ultimately Pennsylvania. Early October 1854: Within one week of departure, the ship springs serious leaks requiring passengers and crew to man pumps around the clock. Cholera breaks out in steerage. November 12, 1854: The ship encounters thick fog that develops into a full nor'easter by evening. Captain Thomas J. Henry retires to his cabin, leaving the second mate in charge. November 13, 1854, approximately 6:10 AM: Residents of Deal Beach spot the New Era grounded on the outer sandbar. The ship's bell rings continuously. Mid-morning, November 13: Waves move the ship to within 150 yards of shore. Rescue attempts begin but surf drives rescuers back repeatedly. Throughout the day: Captain Henry and crew members lower the ship's three lifeboats. Instead of loading passengers, they cut the lines and row themselves to shore, abandoning the immigrants. When passengers attempt to board the final lifeboat, crew members beat them back with oars. Overnight, November 13-14: With darkness falling and rescue impossible, Deal Beach residents build bonfires along the shore so those still clinging to the ship's rigging know they haven't been abandoned. The cries from the ship continue through the night. Early morning, November 14: After more than 26 hours since the grounding, the surf finally calms enough for rescue boats to launch. Only 132-135 survivors are recovered—almost all of them men. Historical Significance The New Era disaster was not an isolated tragedy but part of a grim pattern along the New Jersey coast. Just seven months earlier, the immigrant ship Powhatan had gone down off the same coastline, killing all 250 aboard. The combined outrage over these disasters finally forced Congress to act. On December 15, 1854—exactly one month after the New Era wreck—Congress passed comprehensive lifesaving legislation. Yet characteristic of the era's bureaucratic delays, meaningful funding wouldn't arrive until 1857, and the United States Life-Saving Service wouldn't be formally established until 1878—a full 24 years after the disaster that provoked it. That service eventually merged with the Revenue Cutter Service in 1915 to become the United States Coast Guard. Every Coast Guard rescue today traces its lineage, in part, to the outrage this disaster provoked. What happened to Captain Thomas J. Henry? History records only that he survived, reaching shore in that final lifeboat while his passengers drowned. No record exists of any investigation, trial, or consequence for his actions. The unidentified German immigrants recovered from the wreck were buried in a mass grave behind the Old First Union Methodist Church in West Long Branch. According to a 2020 report, the cemetery is massively overgrown and the monument difficult to find despite its size. In one of history's strange coincidences, the cruise ship Morro Castle caught fire and came aground at nearly the exact same location 80 years later, in September 1934, killing 135 people. Two disasters, same stretch of beach, eight decades apart. Sources and Further Reading The most comprehensive historical account of the New Era disaster is Julius Friedrich Sachse's The Wreck of the Ship "New Era" upon the New Jersey Coast, November 13, 1854, published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1907. Sachse researched the tragedy using both English and German sources, including survivor accounts. For broader context on New Jersey's maritime disasters, Robert F. Bennett's The Deadly Shipwrecks of the Powhattan & the New Era on the Jersey Shore (The History Press, 2015) provides detailed analysis of both tragedies and their role in establishing the Life-Saving Service. The New Era Anchor Historical Marker, erected in 2002, stands in front of a church in Allenhurst, New Jersey. The anchor was recovered from the wreck site in 1999. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

190: Hazardville, Connecticut: When Gunpowder Made—and Destroyed—a Town Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On January 12, 1888, nineteen-year-old Minnie Freeman stood in a one-room schoolhouse six miles south of Ord, Nebraska, teaching thirteen students their lessons on what seemed like an unusually warm winter morning. Forty degrees in January felt like spring, and her students had arrived without their heavy coats. By mid-afternoon, everything would change. An arctic front racing south from Canada at unprecedented speed—seven hundred and eighty miles in twelve hours—was about to transform ordinary classroom work into a desperate fight for survival. When the storm struck around 2:45 PM, the wind ripped the door off its hinges and began peeling away the tarpaper roof. As temperatures plummeted from forty degrees to well below zero and visibility dropped to nothing, Minnie remembered a ball of twine she had confiscated from student Frankie Gibben that very morning. In a moment of clarity that would save lives, she tied her thirteen students together, spacing the oldest along the line with the youngest protected in the middle, and led them blindly through the whiteout toward a farmhouse she could only navigate by memory. **Timeline of Events:** - **Morning, January 12, 1888:** Unusually warm day (40 degrees); students arrive at Midvale School without heavy coats - **Mid-morning:** Minnie confiscates ball of twine from student Frankie Gibben - **2:45 PM:** Blizzard strikes with hurricane-force winds; door ripped off, roof begins tearing away - **Late afternoon:** Minnie ties students together with twine and leads them approximately 80-100 yards to nearby farmhouse - **Evening:** All thirteen children survive; storm continues raging **Historical Significance:** The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888 claimed an estimated 235 lives across the Great Plains, with over 100 victims being children caught in schoolhouses or trying to walk home. Many teachers who kept students inside watched them freeze as fuel ran out; others who sent children home unknowingly condemned them to die in the whiteout. Minnie Freeman’s quick thinking and that confiscated ball of twine made the difference between life and death. Within weeks, she became a national celebrity—\"Nebraska’s Fearless Maid.\" A song written in her honor sold over a million copies of sheet music, and she received more than 80 marriage proposals from strangers. Today, a Venetian glass mural in the Nebraska State Capitol commemorates her heroism, showing a young woman leading a line of children through a blizzard, the twine connecting them visible in the artwork. **Sources:** Nebraska State Historical Society; David Laskin’s *The Children’s Blizzard*; contemporary newspaper accounts from January-March 1888. **Word Count:** 432 words --- Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In 1889, the Montana frontier witnessed a cold-blooded betrayal when a trusted hunting guide turned killer. What began as an expedition into the wilderness ended in murder when greed overcame loyalty. The guide who was supposed to lead them to game instead led them to their graves. This is the story of trust broken, justice pursued, and the harsh realities of life in the untamed West. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

187: Globe, Arizona: The Curse of Room 18—Two Miners, One Deadly Room Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Two miners. Same room. Thirteen months apart. Both dead. In 1906, Globe, Arizona was one of the richest copper towns in the Southwest—and one of the most dangerous. Room 18 at the International House became something of a legend among miners: a place where men went in with full pockets and never came out alive. The story of what happened there, and why no one was ever convicted, is the kind of forgotten American history that reminds you the frontier wasn't that long ago.

In August 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar vanished during a family fishing trip at Swayze Lake near Opelousas, Louisiana. Eight months of desperate searching yielded nothing—the boy had seemingly vanished into the alligator-infested swamp without a trace. Then authorities found William Cantwell Walters, a traveling handyman, with a child matching Bobby's description in Mississippi. What happened next would become one of America's most tragic cases of mistaken identity—a story where class, wealth, and the bias of 1913 society determined which mother deserved to keep her child. When Lessie Dunbar arrived to identify the boy, she wasn't immediately certain. But after bathing him and examining his moles and scars, she declared him her lost son. The celebration in Opelousas was immediate: parades, festivities, the prodigal child returned. Case closed. Except Julia Anderson, an unmarried field worker from North Carolina, insisted the boy was her son Bruce. She'd allowed Walters—the father of her children—to travel with Bruce while she worked in the fields. This wasn't abandonment; it was survival for poor rural families. But Julia faced impossible odds. The newspapers called her "coarse" and questioned her morals. The courts valued respectability over evidence. William Walters was convicted of kidnapping, and the boy went home to Opelousas as Bobby Dunbar. For ninety-two years, the case remained closed. Then DNA testing revealed the devastating truth. Timeline of Events The Bobby Dunbar case unfolded across three critical periods—the initial disappearance, the contested identification, and the eventual DNA revelation that rewrote history. • August 23, 1912: Bobby Dunbar, age 4, disappears from Swayze Lake during a family fishing trip near Opelousas, Louisiana. Initial searches conclude he likely drowned. • April 1913: William Cantwell Walters is arrested in Columbia, Mississippi with a boy matching Bobby's description. Walters insists the child is Bruce Anderson. • April-May 1913: Both Lessie Dunbar and Julia Anderson travel to Columbia to identify the child. Both claim absolute certainty. • October-November 1913: Walters stands trial in Opelousas for kidnapping. He is convicted and sentenced to prison.