Hattie Jackson (Endangered Missing)

On the morning of July 21st 1961, six year old Hattie Jackson and her older brother Herbert, set off with a packed lunch for Rock Creek Park. It was just a six block walk from the siblings’ home in north Washington D.C. After meeting up with Herbert’s friends the group played on the playground and then went swimming in the creek. After a little while the children split up and Hattie was left alone. Hattie was last seen on a swing; a man wearing sunglasses was standing next to her.  Hattie has been missing since that day. Foul play is suspected and there is a person of interest  in her abduction. What’s more Hattie’s case is inextricably linked to another long forgotten unsolved murder from America’s north east.

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Newspaper Archive 
Washington D.C Evening Star
22/06/61
23/07/61
24/07/61
25/07/61
26/07/61
05/08/61
09/08/61
21/08/61
27/08/61
31/08/61
01/09/61
15/09/61
11/05/62
Philadelphia Enquirer 
04/05/62
Philadelphia Daily News
04/05/62
Baltimore Sun
23/09/59
12/05/62
03/05/62
Pittsburgh Courier
12/04/62
19/05/62
26/05/62
The Tribune 
12/05/62
The Bedford Daily Times-Mail
17/05/62
The Birmingham News
13/05/62

Websites

TheCharleyProjecthttps://charleyproject.org › case › h...Hattie Yvonne Jackson

Whereabouts Still Unknownhttps://whereaboutsstillunknown.wordpress.com › ...Hattie Jackson | Whereabouts Still Unknown - WordPress.com

https://www.inquirer.com/crime/philadelphia-boy-box-girl-box-forgotten-20221209.html?outputType=amp

https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Northampton_County_Jane_Doe_(1983)

WordPress.comhttps://morbidworldblog.wordpress.com › ...Philadelphia's Other Unknown Child - Morbid World

https://6abc.com/amp/philadelphia-potters-grave-dna-technology-cracking-cold-cases/3910216/

All That's Interestingallthatsinteresting.comThe Boy In The Box: The Mysterious Case That Took Over 60 Years To ..

https://doenetwork.org/cases/717ufnc.html

https://doenetwork.org/cases/1638ufpa.html

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Transcript

Hattie Jackson

This episode deals with a crime committed against a child. Please exercise self-care when choosing to listen.

In July 1961 Washington D.C. was experiencing a sweltering heatwave. Very little rain had fallen that summer and the temperature had been hovering at around 32 Celsius or 90 Fahrenheit for weeks. 6 year old Hattie Yvonne Jackson was on her summer break from Truesdell Elementary School and was one of many neighbourhood children looking to play outside in the sunshine . Hattie lived with her mother and father and two older siblings in a well-presented two storey property on Eighth Street in North Washington. Hattie’s father Herbert was a photostat operator and worked in an office of the weather bureau. 

Friday July 21st 1961 saw the sun out in force. The low was 23 celsius (75 F) with the temperature peaking at 33 celsius (93 Fahrenheit) in the middle of the day. It was way too nice to be cooped up inside. In the late morning Hattie’s mother prepared a packed lunch for her and her 10 year old brother Herbert Jr. The pair then set off for Rock Creek Park.

 Rock Creek Park is a 1754 acre national park situated within Washington D.C. It is a popular place for people to escape the busyness and stress of city life, with hiking paths, sports facilities and a zoological park. The brother and sister walked about six blocks until they arrived at the playground, which was just on the edge of the national park at Sixteenth and Kennedy Streets in North Washington. At the playground they met three of Herbert's friends: Marvin aged 11, Louis 9 and Desi 8. They played ball games and went on the swings and roundabout.

After a little while they rested and ate lunch. Herbert later said he remembered someone saying the time was four minutes before midday when they sat down to eat. After they had finished, one of the children - one report said it was Herbert - suggested to the group that they go down to the creek and find a spot to play in the water. 

They soon found the perfect place, jumping across the rocks to get to the cool water. They undressed, leaving their clothes on the banks of the creek. While they were splashing about in the shallow water, a man approached and sat down on a boulder. He stayed there watching them. The man occasionally called out to the children to show him how they could swim. For the most part the children ignored the man. A short while later a Park police vehicle pulled up on the road close by. The officer's name was Private Sydor and he had seen the children playing in the water as he drove past. He walked over to the children and told them to come out of the water as that part of the creek was polluted.

The children heeded the officer’s advice and came out of the creek. The officer left, not before noticing the man sat on the boulder. He wasn't concerned as the man was not acting suspiciously. Officer Sydor drove off in his car before the children had completely left the area. 

The man who had been watching them stood up and walked over to the boys (reports emphasise he talked to them rather than Hattie). He explained to the boys what pollution was as it seems they were a bit confused about the reasons for Officer Sydor’s concern. The man told them he knew of a section of the creek that wasn't polluted and had beautiful clear blue water. He said he had a car with him and would gladly take them the 3/5 km so they could all go swimming. The boys declined the offer. It is unclear if the children turned the offer down because they were suspicious of the man, because they had been told not to go with strangers or because they didn't want to travel so far from home. Having received this answer the man turned and walked off towards the playground. 

Minutes later the children followed suit as they decided to return to the playground to play on the swings and slides. They followed the same route as the man, which was a shortcut snaking through the woods.

The full route was a couple of kilometres, but I'm not sure of the distance of the shortcut. The path through the trees went uphill and Hattie went ahead of the four boys; soon she had nearly caught up with the man. Herbert and his friends were busy chatting and fell further behind. The boys eventually reached the top of the hill, a short distance away they could see Hattie playing on the swing in the playground. The man was standing next to her. Herbert, Marvin, Louis and Desi decided they wanted to go back to the creek and play on the rocks. They turned around and went back down the hill. 

The exact time this happened later proved difficult to pinpoint. Police later concluded Hattie was seen on the swing between 11.30am and 12.30pm.This is one of numerous details that has proved difficult to confirm.

The boys got caught up in their fun and games and when they eventually headed back up the hill toward the playpark over an hour and a half had passed. The time of their return was between 2 and 3pm. They arrived at the swings to find Hattie was gone. The man who had been standing next to Hattie was also nowhere to be seen. 

Herbert and his friends looked around the area but found no sign of the little girl so headed back home, expecting to find Hattie there. When Herbert opened the front door he knew straight away his sister had not made her way home. Something was wrong. On hearing the news from Herbert the Jacksons contacted the police to report their daughter missing.

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A description of Hattie was given out in the media. The little girl was described as black, 3 ft or 91 cm tall and weighing 45 pounds or 20 kg. She had shoulder length black hair and brown eyes. When she was last seen Hattie had been wearing a white long sleeved blouse, brown and white checked shorts and pink sandals. She had a blue ribbon tied in her hair. 

160 police officers and members of the public took part in a search of Rock Creek Park that carried on throughout the night. It was led by Deputy Chief George R Wallrodt and included officers from Park police and the Metropolitan police. The majority of officers came from the 6th precinct but they were aided by those in the 3rd, 7th, 8th, 10th and 13th precincts. Search teams started from the playground and went out in circles from there. The wooded hills were tough terrain to cover and large portable spotlights were brought in to aid the search. Officers were given walkie talkies to communicate and better coordinate efforts.

Sixteen dogs from the canine corps together with their handlers worked all night and well into the next day. The dogs were given a sniff of the pyjamas Hattie had worn to bed on Thursday night. Three dogs led their handlers from the playground along a footpath in the woods to a car park on Beach Drive. Beach Drive follows alongside the creek through the southern part of the park. This location is 1 km south of the intersection of Beach Drive and Military Road. Here the scent abruptly stopped, indicating the likelihood that Hattie had got into a car at the spot and been driven away.

Lieutenant Thomas Herlihy took over the search at daybreak. Private Sydor, the officer who had warned the children about the pollution in the water, and a colleague, Robert Turner, used grappling hooks to dredge the creek. By the end of the day the entire south region of the park from Blagden Avenue to the zoo had been combed but no trace of Hattie was found. 

What police did find was two eyewitness accounts that confirmed what the tracker dogs had indicated. Two 14 year old boys who were playing near the playground on Friday afternoon saw a white man and black girl walking down a path together towards the aforementioned car park. The boys saw the man stoop down and point out his car to the girl. 

A report came in late on Saturday 22nd July, the end of the first full day of searching, to say a man had been seen placing a little girl on the front seat of a car said to be a 1957/58 blue Plymouth. The car was seen stationary on Beach Drive close to the junction of Military Road. Once the man and little girl were in the car it then drove south on Beach Drive. It confirmed everyone's worst fears: Hattie had been abducted and taken to an unknown location.

Just as an aside. Some recent write ups of the case say that two men were seen placing the girl in the car. In reading the contemporary newspaper reports I have not come across this detail, so I am not sure what to make of this. 

The FBI were now assisting the Metropolitan and Park police in the investigation. The possibility was explored that Hattie’s abduction could be linked to other similar crimes. Known sex offenders living in the area were checked and law enforcement agencies from the region began their own local searches.

The Prince George County Police, 40 minutes away in neighbouring Maryland, searched woods near Ardmore. A seven year old boy, Michael Condetti, had been found murdered there in November 1960. Fairfax police in Virginia searched an area northwest of Lorton, where 23 year old Marta Santa Cruz was found strangled just weeks before Hattie went missing. Nothing of note was found by either police force. Joseph “Whiskey Joe” Haverman Alvey was later arrested for Michael Condetti’s murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1962. The murder of Marta Santa Cruz remains unsolved, though it does not appear to be connected to Hattie Jackson’s abduction.

On Monday 24th of July reports in the Washington Evening Star detailed further eyewitness statements concerning incidents believed to involve Hattie at or near Rock Creek Park on that Friday afternoon. 

Around lunchtime on Friday a thirty year old man from Kensington, Maryland who worked for the American Federation of Labour and Congress pulled his car over in a parking spot on Beach Drive. He exited his car in order to stretch his legs after a long drive. There was one other car parked nearby. It was a blue or grey older model Plymouth or Chrysler. (Plymouth was a car brand produced by Chrysler) It had yellow and black registration plates. To his left the witness noticed a white man and a black girl standing on the bank overlooking the car park. The witness then got back into his car and began to drive off. As he did so he looked back to see the man and girl walking down the bank towards the parked car.

The detail about the licence plates or tags is interesting. Licence plates with a yellow background indicated the car owner did not live in Washington D.C. In 1961 a yellow licence plate could mean the car was registered in Georgia, Iowa, one of the Dakotas (the report I read does not stipulate north or south, though I think it is north), California, and New York, although the latter was more of an orange colour. Police suspected the car came from a state close to Washington D.C., as a car from California, for example, would have been too conspicuous. Having said that, Washington D.C. was the nation's political hub which meant cars were regularly seen in the city from all over the country. 

Another witness came forward with a very disturbing story. A woman from Arlington, Virginia who was in the vicinity of Rock Creek Park on the afternoon of Friday July 21st reported seeing a car driving on Blagden Avenue in the direction of the park. This is a five minute drive from the parking spot on Beach Drive. As the witness passed the car she heard a girl shouting “let me out” from the open window. The witness did not see the driver of the vehicle. This sighting left investigators perplexed as they couldn't understand why the man would be driving back towards the park. A plea was put out for more witnesses who could corroborate this story.

Investigators were keen to trace the man the police officer had noticed sitting and watching the children playing in the water. After interviewing Herbert, his friends and Private Sydor a likeness of the man was released. This was put together by Detective Sergeant William Gunter of the Park police using the brand new “Identikit” resource. Gunter had recently gone on a five day training course to utilise this new cutting edge tool. Identikit replaced the old method of a hand drawn suspect sketch. The new method was based on a trained officer being able to re-create a likeness of the suspect's face based on witness direction, using hundreds of transparencies of facial and head features. 

In this instance the finished headshot was said by the children and Officer Sydor to be a good likeness of the man they had seen. I'll put this Identikit image on social media.

This is a description of the suspect. He was between 30-40 years old (some reports suggest early 30’s). He had a deep tan or swarthy complexion. He had an oval face with a smallish mouth and thin lips. His hair was dark brown and hair brushed straight back. It was said to be quite bushy in appearance and it looked as if the man was growing out a crew cut. 

He was wearing a white t-shirt or sports shirt with the sleeves rolled up, grey or light brown trousers, a black belt and sunglasses. He was around 5 foot 9 or 175 cm, with a muscular build, weighing 175-180 lbs or around 80kg. His overall demeanour was described as “meek” by the Washington Evening Star.

The white man seen with the black girl at the carpark on Beach Drive was said to have matched this description. 

I mentioned before that the timings of the Friday Hattie was abducted are a little confusing. At first, police believed Hattie had been taken at 2pm. After a reconstruction of the events which police undertook with Herbert and his friends they revised the timeline and realised Hattie must have been taken earlier. They gave a window of between 11.30-12.30, possibly up to 1pm. It was between 2pm and 3pm when Herbert and his friends returned to the playground and realised the 6 year old had gone.

This discrepancy in the timings was partly because Herbert changed details in his version of events over the first few days. There is no suggestion this was deliberate but rather due to the stress of the whole incident. I also wonder if poor Herbert thought he would get in trouble for leaving Hattie alone. 

Over the next month police were reluctant to share theories about the case, though press reports suggest it was being worked hard by the investigators. Witnesses were spoken to multiple times and Hattie's brother Herbert was shown picture after picture from the police rogues gallery. Unfortunately no arrests followed. Seeing the mountainous task that was ahead of them, Police Chief Robert V Murray announced a $300 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who abducted Hattie, which eventually went up to $1000 thanks to some private donors (This would be the equivalent of around $10,000 today?).

At the end of August 1961 an older woman named Martha contacted police to say she believed she had witnessed the abduction of another child by the same man who had taken Hattie. 

Martha’s two grandchildren, 9 year old Bobby and 11 year old Priscilla, burst into her house to  tell her a white man had approached them near where they lived on First Street North Washington. The man had told them he wanted to show them something. Alarm bells rang for both children and they fled to their grandmother's house. On hearing the news Martha raced out to the street and saw a car parked in a nearby alleyway. A white man was in the driver's seat and a black boy sat next to him. Martha yelled at the man and he drove away quickly. 

Martha said the man looked similar to the Identikit picture of Hattie’s abductor. She added that the man she had seen had grey flecked hair and was wearing a brown suit, bow tie. Like Hattie’s abductor, he wore sunglasses. 

Metropolitan Police and the FBI responded. Over the next 24 hours they checked 500 homes and undertook local searches but they found no evidence of a missing child in the area. Another witness, a Reverend Jones, did come forward and reported seeing a car (a 1960 Pontiac) in the aforementioned alleway. However he had only seen a white man inside the car. No child was with him. Nevertheless, inquiries did unearth other reports of children being approached by a stranger over the previous two weeks. Some witnesses said he looked like the Identikit of the  suspect in Hattie Jackson’s abduction. 

In the early months of the investigation a couple of suspects made their way into newspaper reports. Just five days after Hattie vanished, police in the tenth precinct received a call that provided the name of a potential suspect. The man was said to be known by police and was currently free on bond after being charged with a serious crime. It was reported in the Washington Evening Star on July 26th 1961 that this man's picture would be shown to the witnesses and if identified he would be brought in for questioning. I cannot uncover anything more about this person so I presume the lead went nowhere. 

In mid-September 1961 a 33 year old musician walked into a Metropolitan police station and confessed to the murder of Hattie Jackson. The man told detectives from the sex crimes division, homicide squad and the Park police that he would take them to the location of Hattie’s body. He claimed he had killed Hattie and left her body in a suitcase inside a room of an apartment block on Porter Street, North Washington. On inspection nothing was found at this location. He then changed his story and said he had placed the body in an incinerator at 14th and Fairmont Streets. Again, nothing was found. Finally he claimed he had buried the body at Rock Creek Park. For a third time the search was fruitless. The man could provide no evidence to back up any of his claims. For what reason the man had tried to disrupt the investigation and lead police on a wild goose chase is unknown. 

Four years before Hattie was abducted, on February 25th 1957, a college student was out walking near the Sisters of Good Shepherd Reformatory School for Girls on Susquehanna Road in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This location is a 2 and a half hour drive north of Washington D.C. The young man from La Salle College was out in the hope of meeting any of the girls from the reform school. As he walked along a wooded area on the side of the road he made a gruesome discovery and one that over the next half a century would attract world wide fascination.

The young man stumbled and noticed a JC Penny box amongst the bushes. On closer inspection he could make out what he thought was a discarded child’s doll. He didn't give it a lot of thought and went on his way. Later that evening he saw news reports about a missing girl and released what he had seen may not have deen a doll and instead he may have inadvertently stumbled upon a deceased child. He subsequently contacted authorities and reported what he had found.

The missing girl turned out to be unrelated, but the college student had indeed found the body of a child. It was in fact the body of a boy aged between 4 and 6. He had been beaten to death. The boy did not fit any missing reports and there was no way of identifying him. The child became known as “America's unknown child" or the case of “the boy on the box”. It became one of America’s most infamous unsolved murders and a mystery that was the focus of countless articles, tv  documentaries, websites, podcasts and a best-selling book by New York Times journalist David Stout. After over 60 years, on December 8th 2022, the Philadelphia police department announced that the boy in the box had been identified as Joseph Augustus Zarelli, born January 13 1953. The identification had been determined through the use of DNA and forensic genealogy, along with plenty of old fashioned detective work. Although Joseph's  identity has been returned to him, the quest for answers about who murdered him continues. 

I am sure you are  familiar with this story. I mention it because just five years later and at a location only a half hour's drive away another child’s body was found that bears striking similarities to the case of Joseph Augustus Zarelli. The difference is that this equally tragic case has received very little attention and has largely been forgotten. What's more, this particular story is inextricably linked to the abduction of Hattie Jackson.

At 3.50pm on May 3rd 1962 a 43 year old barge worker, Jesse F Davis, from New Jersey, was on a vessel travelling on the Schuylkill River in South Pennsylvania. This was ten months after Hattie Jackson was abducted and the location is about a 2 and a half hour drive north of Washington D.C. As the barge made its way downriver, Davis noticed a stretch of clothesline floating on the surface of the water. He managed to grab the end of the cord and pulled it towards him. It was tied around a yellow wooden box, the kind that was used to hold milk bottles. He tugged on the line and the clothesline unravelled, which in turn unfastened the lid of the box. Seconds later the barge worker had the shock of his life as a headless body emerged from inside the box and floated slowly to the surface of the water.

Dr James E Weston, Assistant Medical Examiner, completed the post mortem. The body was that of a black child estimated to be aged between 3 and 6 years old. The body was naked and Captain David E Brown of the Philadelphia police announced that it had been in the water anywhere between 5 days and two months before it was found.

The following facts concerning the injuries on the body are distressing so please skip forward a minute or so if you would rather not hear them. Both arms had been fractured before death suggesting the poor child had been abused. The feet and back had evidence of burning. This had been after death and investigators believed there had been an attempt to incinerate the body. The fourth finger on the right hand had been partially amputated. This wound had been bandaged with gauze and tape. Indicating some level of care shown towards the child. The young girl had been decapitated with a very sharp blade, probably a knife. Cause of death could not be determined. Fingerprints were taken of the girl in the hope it would aid identification. Searches were made in the river to see if the girl’s head could be found, but to no avail

The child's body had been covered in a white apron, similar to a machinist’s uniform. A clear, blue plastic sheet had then been wrapped around it. Bricks had been placed inside the box to help to weigh it down in the water. Pages from March 11th 1962 Sunday edition of The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin were found under the body. This publication had one of the biggest circulations in the country at the time. This clue led investigators from the Philadelphia police, guided by Captain David E Brown, to conclude that whoever had killed this young girl had been in Philadelphia on that date. 

The body had been found in a stretch of the Schuylkill River owned by the Atlantic Refinery company, about 1.5km south of  Passyunk Avenue in Philadelphia. A US coast guard calculated that the body had most likely been put into the river near East River Drive or West River Drive (now called Martin Luther King jr drive) 13km upriver. 

No similar children from Pennsylvania had been reported missing and captain David E Brown and his team were at a loss as to the identity of the girl. Neighbourhoods throughout Philadelphia were targeted with flyers but no witnesses came forward and no child was ever reported missing.

Within a little over a week the Pittsburgh Courier were running articles asking if the headless body found in the Schuylkill River could be that of the missing 6 year old Hattie Jackson. She was the only missing child in the region who vaguely matched the description of the unknown body. Captain David E Brown did contact detectives in Washington to discuss this possibility. 

It seems that after more analysis medical experts in Philadelphia narrowed the age estimation of the headless girl. Originally they had said 3-6 but on closer inspection they believed it was unlikely the child was older than 5. Hattie was 6 going on 7 when she had vanished but she would have been many months older by the time the girl in the box is believed to have been killed. Medical experts estimated the “girl in the box” had died sometime between March and the end of April 1962. Thismeant Hattie’s kidnapper would have had to keep her alive for at least 7 months, something investigators thought unlikely. 

As an aside, according to information from the Charley project and Doe network the girl in the box was taller than Hattie by 10cm. If Hattie had been kidnapped for over half a year she would have grown but could she have grown this much? Most children that age grow 6-7 cm a year. Obviously the records of Hattie’s height may be wrong. Estimating height is often a very difficult thing for people to do and errors can be made.

In the May 26th edition of the Pittsburgh Courier it was announced that an autopsy and pathologist study had ruled out the possibility that the ”Girl in the Box” was Hattie Jackson.

Since that time there has been much debate about this decision. As the head was missing from the body, dental records could not be compared. Hattie Jackson was a 6 year old little girl, so her fingerprints were not on file and this was decades before DNA analysis could be utilised. I will come back to the DNA evidence in both cases shortly.

The unidentified girl in the box was buried as a Jane Doe in an MDF coffin in Philadelphia's last remaining potter’s field. A potter's field is a cemetery specifically for unknown or unclaimed people. Unlike the “Boy in the box” Joseph Zarelli, no-one took on the case and the world soon forgot about the unknown girl found in a milk box on the Schuylkill river.

At the same time that stories about the “Girl in the box” appeared in the press a name began to be mentioned in press reports in connection with Hattie Jackson's abduction. 

In the second week of May 1962, 30 year old Thomas Welton Holland, born November 26 1931, from Baltimore, Maryland was placed on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Holland had found work over the years as a baker's assistant, clerk, dairy helper, hotel worker, labourer, salad chef and warehouse worker.  He had also spent time in the military and been dishonourably discharged. Holland also had an extensive criminal record dating back to 1948 and had spent time behind bars in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida. He had convictions for car theft, burglary, armed robbery, indecent exposure and had committed a string of vicious sexual assaults on children. 

In 1954, Holland was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a crime spree which included the following offences: 

Holding up a woman owner of a grocery store in Middle River Maryland at knifepoint. The burglary of firearms and cash from a couple Holland had befriended. Attempted rape at gunpoint. I think the survivor of this assault was a female but I am not sure of the age. The sexual assault of two boys and an assault on another boy who had fought back when Holland attempted to sexually assault him. 

On March 28th 1960 Thomas Welson Holland was released on parole from Maryland State Penitentiary on condition that he participated in psychiatric help on release. Holland did not attend his treatment appointments and the authorities began to pursue him for breaking the stipulations of his parole in order to return him to prison. In May 1961 Holland left his job and home in the town of Glen Burnie, Maryland and disappeared. In August 1961 a federal warrant was issued for his arrest which charged him with unlawful interstate flight to avoid confinement for robbery.

Holland was known to use the aliases, Bob Mitchell, Robbery Clay Mitchell, Bud and Tommy. The FBI considered him extremely dangerous as he had convictions with knives and guns. They warned that if he was not captured it would lead to violence and sooner or later the murder of a small child. Despite his violent tendencies the public were warned that Holland appeared to be very mild-mannered and came across as an intellectual. (Remember the description of the man in the Identikit as looking “meek”). According to the Baltimore Sun the FBI also said Holland  was a smart dresser and glib talker.

Physically Holland was 5ft 11 or 180 cm and weighed 175 lbs or 80 kgs. He had a fair complexion, brown hair and hazel eyes. In the photo used in newspapers he is wearing glasses. He had a small scar under his chin, and another on the back of his right hand. He had a mole on the right side of his throat. Holland had numerous distinctive tattoos. On his upper left arm he had a star and on his left forearm the names, Blondie, Thelma and Mae. He also had his social security number 212 28 0159 tattooed here. On his right forearm he had the name Bud and a picture of a dagger. The initials B.E were tattooed on the left side of his chest. 

In May 1962 newspapers in Washington D.C, Maryland and further afield were full of stories about Holland and were appealing for the public to be vigilant. It was at this time that I first found references to Holland in relation to Hattie Jackson’s abduction. The modus operandi of the person who took Hattie seems to match Holland's personality. That man was a confident talker and like Holland he seemed to be interested in assaulting both boys and girls. Physically Holland looks remarkably similar to the Identikit that was produced of the suspect in Hattie Jackson’s case. He is a little taller than the man seen with Hattie but Officer Sydor, who provided lots of the information for the description, only saw him sitting down. The man seen with Hattie was said to have a dark swarthy complexion whereas Holland is described as fair. However, it should be noted that it was the height of a warm summer when Hattie was taken and her abductor may have been sporting a tan or even sunburn. 

In an article from the May 26th edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, police comment that there is no indication that Holland was involved in Hattie Jackson’s abduction but they recognise similarities between the descriptions of the man seen with the girl and Holland. In other words there was no evidence police could point to but they were certainly not ruling it out based on what they knew about the crimes Holland liked to commit.

The idea of a person like Holland being out and roaming the streets sends terror down my spine as a parent of young children. Thanks to the work of an astute officer in the Iola police department, Kansas, Holland was caught less than a month after his inclusion on the FBI’s ten most wanted list.

On June 3rd 1962 Officer Stranghoner Jr was on duty in the town of La Harpe, Kansas when a man calling himself Robert C Mitchell came into the police station and approached the desk. The stranger had been in the town for less than a day and was looking to collect a meal ticket. This was a joint scheme run by the police and Salvation Army for the homeless and destitute to secure a warm meal. 

Officer Stranghoner began to fill out the paperwork and asked Robert C Mitchell for his social security number. He replied that he had the number right here and proceeded to show him the number 212 28 0159 which was tattooed on his left arm. Officer Stranghoner issued the meal ticket and the man went on his way. 

A short while later Officer Stranghoner was going through a pile of recent FBI circulars with details of wanted fugitives when he read a flyer about Thomas Welton Holland. He immediately recognised the man from the description of the social security tattoo. He contacted the Highway troopers who drove around the small town (it has a population of less than 500 today) looking for Holland. After 20 mins of searching they located him hitchhiking on Highway 54. He was just about to get into a car that had pulled over to give him a lift. Troopers Ronald Cranor and Keith Dillion arrested Holland and brought him in for questioning. At first Holland first thought the local police were just checking out the new drifter in town and believed he would be on his way in no time. When he heard his name over the radio he knew the game was up and admitted to being Thomas Welton Holland.

Holland was never charged in connection with Hattie Jackson's abduction but in the eyes of many he remains a suspect in the case. Try as I might, I can find very little mention of Thomas Welton Holland after he was arrested in 1962. From searches I have made I believe he died in California in 1996 and was married at the time. I have also found an entry on a family history site from someone claiming to be his daughter looking for information about her father. The post is almost two decades old and there have been no replies. 

Questions concerning whether Hattie Jackson is the unknown “girl in the box” have always remained. Thomas McAndrews is a retired homicide detective from Pennsylvania State police and Lehigh County district attorney's office. He later became the director of law enforcement relations with Innovative Forensic Investigations, a genetic genealogy and private investigation company. In 2018 McAndrews, together with Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Florida, attempted to re-examine eight unidentified murder victims from cold cases. This included the “Girl in the box”.

One of the tasks was to exhume the bodies and collect a biological sample suitable for DNA analysis. The pair found seven of the eight bodies and were able to collect samples. When they opened the coffin believed to contain the remains of the “Girl in the box” they found it was empty. Record keeping in the early 1960s was not as thorough as it is today and some error was obviously made. They dug up other nearby plots but found nothing. There is also no record that any sample was taken at the time the headless body was first found. If samples do exist somewhere it will only be due to blind luck that they are ever found. I mentioned earlier that fingerprints were taken in 1962. Many online sources back this up. However the Charley project entry for this case (Number 1638UFPA) says that no fingerprints exist. It may be that they have also been misplaced. With no DNA or fingerprints it sadly looks like it is going to take a miracle for this little girl to have her identity returned to her.

There is also no DNA available in Hattie Jackson’s case. Often in the cases of missing people  family members provide DNA that can be attached to the missing person’s record. This does not seem to have happened in Hattie’s case. It's likely that the events are now so long ago that any surviving family members don't know this is a possibility. I have read one entry on an internet forum which suggests the author of a blog which featured Hattie’s case 46.58  was contacted by a relative who said they would provide a DNA sample. I really hope this is true. 

While researching for this episode I was reminded of the case of Sharon Lee Gallegos. The 4 year old was abducted by an unidentified man and woman from outside her house in  Alamogordo New Mexico on July 21 1960. (As I’m writing this I’ve just realised that, coincidentally, this was exactly a year before Hattie’s abduction). The body of a young child was found ten days later in a desert in Arizona, more than eight hours drive away. At the time it was speculated  it may be Sharon Lee Gallegos but pathologists determined this was not the case based on an age discrepancy. The little girl found in the desert became known as “Little Miss Nobody” and Sharon’s parents were left with no answers as to what had happened to their daughter. In March 2022, DNA proved that “Little Miss Nobody” was in fact Sharon Lee Gallegos. Mistakes do happen.

I should mention that the unidentified body of a 3-7 year old was found in Northampton County near the Virginia/North Carolina border in December 1983. The remains were skeletonised and were not entire, the largest piece being the skull. At first it was thought to be the missing parts of the remains St Louis Jane Doe, the headless body of a young girl found in a basement in St Louis, Missouri in February 1983. This turned out not to be the case. Over the years there has been some speculation it could have been Hattie Jackson. That would have meant the remains would have  lain there undetected for over twenty years. This seems to have been excluded as a possibility based on specific bone abnormalities found on the Northampton Jane Doe skull, also an isotope analysis suggested the girl had been brought up in North Carolina. There is also a possibility that the girl may have had a mixed ethnic background, which Hattie Jackson did not.

Charles Gallagher, Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology at La Salle University, was quoted in the Inquirer in December of 2022 as saying that missing Black and Latino children are not treated in the same way as missing white children. 

According to FBI statistics, in 2020 there were 346,000 children who were classified as missing persons. 125,726 were black and 197,381 were white. Over 36% of missing children are black. Considering black children make up about 14% of all children across America this is a troubling statistic. Delve a little deeper and the differences are even more pronounced. 

The FBI does not have a separate category for hispanic children, they are included with white children. Additionally children who identify as Afro-latino are also put in the white category. 

Sherri Jefferson, executive director of African American Juvenile Justice Project, believes more black children are missing than white and hispanic children combined. Of all new missing children cases reported in 2020 Jefferson says  62% were black. The sad truth is that missing black children are underreported. This is due to a variety of factors including distrust of law enforcement, warrants being issued for runaways and black families being denied the opportunity to complete missing person reports. Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, says those that are reported are disproportionately classified as runaways. 

The attention black missing children get in the media is not proportional to the number of cases. A 2010 study quoted on CNN in 2019 said that black missing children made up 37% of all cases but only about 20% of the cases covered on the news were of black children. A 2015 study reduces this figure and claims news coverage is only 7%. A Study by USA Today covering 375 videos shared of missing children on the The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Facebook page, found those about white children (particularly girls) got significantly more likes and shares. This was despite the fact there were more videos about black and hispanic children posted on the site. 

In the case of  Joseph Zarelli, “The Boy in the Box”, an investigator in the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office named  Remintgon Bristow was determined to not let people forget. He was utterly devoted to seeing the unknown boy's identity returned to him and the case solved. While reading newspaper reports it does seem that in the early stages both the case of Hattie Jackson’s and that of “The girl in the box” were worked hard by police. But as the months turned to years both cases faded into obscurity. They did not have a Remington Bristow to champion their cause. One of the things that drives me to do this podcast is the desire to air these stories that have been forgotten and to dig to unearth the truth. 

If you have any information about the abduction of Hattie Jackson you can contact the Metropolitan police on 202 727 9099. If you have any information about the case of the little girl known as “the Girl in a box” you can contact the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office on 215 685 7445.