Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Author:Maureen Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2017-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

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WHO IS TRULY DEVIOUS? 80 YEARS ON

Postdetective.com

April 13, 2016

On April 8, 1936, a letter arrived at the Burlington, Vermont, office of Albert Ellingham. Albert Ellingham was, at the time, one of the richest men in America. He constructed an estate and a school in the mountains outside of Burlington, and it was there he lived with his wife and his daughter, breathing the sweet, clean air. A Burlington office collected his personal and business mail, and every day, a car would take sacks of correspondence from Burlington to the house, well up on Mount Hatchet, where it would be sorted and processed by his secretary.

That day, in with the hundreds of letters, one stood out. The envelope was postmarked from Burlington. The address of the Ellingham estate was written on the front in dull pencil, in heavy, square strokes. Inside was a single piece of writing paper that contained the words:

Look! A riddle! Time for fun!

Should we use a rope or gun?

Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty

Poison’s slow, which is a pity

Fire is festive, drowning’s slow

Hanging’s a ropy way to go

A broken head, a nasty fall

A car colliding with a wall

Bombs make a very jolly noise

Such ways to punish naughty boys!

What shall we use? We can’t decide.

Just like you cannot run or hide.

Ha ha.

Truly,

Devious

Threats to Albert Ellingham and his family were not new—in fact, Albert Ellingham had barely survived a car bombing several years before. This was during a time in which industrialists were often under threat. What made this letter so different?

For a start, it was constructed of colorful words and letters that would later be determined to come from popular magazines. In bright, cheerful print, it spelled out a diabolical poem, one that listed the many ways that Albert Ellingham might die. The letter writer gave themselves a name: Truly Devious.

Five days later, while out on a drive, Albert Ellingham’s wife, Iris, was kidnapped, along with their three-year-old daughter, Alice. Along with Iris and Alice, a young girl named Dolores Epstein, who was a student at Ellingham’s new academy on the site, also vanished.

A ransom demand was called in that evening, giving Albert Ellingham just a few minutes to bundle up the money in his safe and take it to a lake on his property. Ellingham was a bit short of cash, so the kidnappers beat up the person sent to collect Iris and Alice, and demanded more.

Robert Mackenzie, Ellingham’s thirty-year-old private secretary, begged to call the police. But Ellingham was convinced that doing so would put his family in more danger. Instead, along with family friend George Marsh by his side, Ellingham took two hundred thousand dollars in marked bills to a remote point in Burlington and lowered the money down to a boat waiting below on Lake Champlain.

The boat sailed off. On May 16, 1936, Dolores Epstein’s body was found in a field in Jericho, Vermont, in a shallow grave. She was discovered by a milk truck driver from a local dairy who had pulled off the road to relieve a call of nature.

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