The Hand on the Wall(83)
True Crime Digest
December 3
It’s been called the greatest mystery of the twentieth century. In 1936, Albert Ellingham was one of the most powerful men in America, his wealth and reach similar to that of Henry Ford or William Randolph Hearst. Ellingham owned newspapers, a movie studio, and dozens of other interests. But his personal passion was for education. To this end, he built a school in the mountains of Vermont and moved there with his family. On April 13 of that year, while out on a pleasure drive, his wife, Iris, and daughter, Alice, were abducted from a country road outside of the estate. On the same day, a student from the academy, Dolores Epstein, also vanished. In the following months, both Dolores and Iris were found dead—Dolores half-buried in a field, and Iris in Lake Champlain. Alice was never recovered. She was only three years old at the time of her disappearance.
Her father dedicated himself entirely to finding his daughter, using his considerable resources on the effort. Dozens of private detectives were sent around the country and the world. A team of 150 secretaries went through the letters and tips that came in on a daily basis. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, took a personal interest in the case. All of this was to no avail. Albert Ellingham died on October 30, 1938, when his sailboat exploded on Lake Champlain, most likely a victim of anarchists. He had been targeted before and escaped. This time, he was not so lucky.
With the death of Albert Ellingham, some of the pressure to find Alice abated, but there have always been people looking for her. Several others came forward claiming to be Alice—all of these were found to be imposters. Alice Ellingham remained one of history’s famous missing persons, like Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa, presumed dead, but with a question mark. All that was ever accepted about the culprit was that they sent a note to Albert Ellingham in the weeks before the kidnapping, a teasing riddle that warned of the danger to come. The letter, which was made of cutout letters from newspapers and magazines, was signed Truly, Devious.
Decades passed without any furtherance of the case, and then, starting last September, events began to move very quickly. Ellingham once again became the scene of tragedy, when two students—Hayes Major and Element Walker—died in accidents on the school grounds. Soon after, an adjunct faculty member of the University of Vermont, Dr. Irene Fenton, died in a house fire in Burlington.
But one student did not believe these things were accidents. She believed they were related to the disappearance of Alice—or rather, to a rumored fortune that would go to anyone who found the missing girl, dead or alive. Ellingham student Stephanie Bell, working with the school’s former head of security, uncovered the body of a child in one of the walls. The child’s remains are currently undergoing testing.
Bell made other significant discoveries, including physical evidence that suggests that the Truly Devious letter, long assumed to have been the work of the Ellingham kidnappers, had nothing to do with the kidnapping at all and was, in fact, a poorly timed student prank. This breaks apart decades of assumptions about the crime.
While the results of the tests and investigations are still pending, and while Ellingham Academy remains closed while the property is secured, it seems that this case may not be so cold after all. And with this most recent discovery, maybe now the spirits are at rest up on Mount Morgan.
AUDIO REVEALS EDWARD KING KNEW OF BLACKMAIL PLANS
A BATT REPORT EXCLUSIVE
DECEMBER 5TH
The Batt Report has obtained exclusive audio of Senator Edward King railing against an unknown person who destroyed materials the campaign appears to have been using to blackmail donors. The audio, embedded below, contains graphic language.
“He took the [expletive] flash drives,” the senator can be heard saying. “I had everything on those. We had all those [expletive] just where we needed them. That was everything we had to keep them in line. Now we have nothing. Nothing. They’re all going to back out. We’re [expletive].”
Stay with The Batt Report for updates on this story.
KING WITHDRAWS PRESIDENTIAL BID
CNN
January 2
Following two weeks of intense speculation, Senator Edward King withdrew his candidacy in next year’s presidential race.
“While it is, of course, a disappointment to withdraw,” he said in a prepared statement, “I realized the toll the campaign might take on my relationship with my family.”
Though the senator cites personal reasons for the withdrawal, Washington insiders have been whispering for weeks about dirty dealings in the King camp, including accusations that the senator may have been blackmailing several individuals in exchange for their financial and political support. Several weeks ago, a recording surfaced in which the senator can be heard yelling about the loss of “everything we had to keep them in line.” In the recording, he laid blame for the loss of this information on his son.
It was revealed that the senator had a son from a previous marriage. In a strange twist, that son attended Ellingham Academy in Vermont, which has been in the news recently as the scene of several tragic events, including the death of YouTube star Hayes Major. The senator’s son was also the subject of a viral video in which he was beaten on a Burlington, Vermont, street . . .
ELLINGHAM ACADEMY REOPENS
THE BATT REPORT
JANUARY 11TH